Thor's Days
by Artemesia
Summary: Sequel to 'Mischief, Lies, and Other Hazards of Parenting.' For a nearly immortal god, a year is nothing. For his little mortal daughter, a year is an eternity. And for the Avengers, a single year might mean a chance, however precarious, to redeem the unredeemable.
1. Prologue

Author's Note: If you've clicked on this and haven't read 'Mischief, Lies, and Other Hazards of Parenting,' you may want to meander that way and then settle back in over here, otherwise you might be wondering how Loki came by a small Midgardian of his own. And a big huge welcome back to all of you who are back for the continuing Adventures in Parenting. :)

A super huge thank you to my Betas 3, Chipper, Jade, and Majoline! These ladies have been amazing at working with the plot and my gazillion mythology questions and axing some truly painful sentences and phrases before they see the light of day. You are indeed awesome. :)

* * *

She might not be his in blood but she was his in mind. Kara seized on learning, no matter how trivial or dull a task, with an earnestness and zeal that suffused him with a quiet pride. It was nothing he had given her, in the strictest sense, but he liked to think he had nourished that curiosity along.

Even something so trivial as time was cause for excitement. Kara sat in his lap, and before them were paper clocks, oversized calendars, lists of days and months and all of the measures by which humans marked the progression of their minutes, days, and years.

"Wed-nes-day," Kara blurted in triumph, each and every syllable a victory chant. They'd been on the word for nearly ten minutes. She deserved the elation.

"Very good," he said, with more relief than he should voice, moving his finger down the page. The tip rested there on the 'T,' and for a moment his voice refused to come. Kara leaned closer to the print, taking his silence for an invitation to read it unaided.

"Ta-hur…Ta-hurs…"

"Thursday." Loki forced a smile, in case she turned to see, his finger shaking against the page for the briefest of moments. For seconds. For bits of time so small they didn't need anything beyond the most general of names.

"Thuuurs-day," Kara said, managing the word far faster than the day named for the All-father, in all its Germanic variation. He saw her eyebrows rise, her lips curve upwards not simply in pride but in recognition. "Thuursday! That sounds like Thor's day!" All she wanted was confirmation, of such a simple guess, of such an easy connection. She pulled at his scarf when he didn't answer. 'Does Thor have a day, Daddy?"

Loki blinked, tried to focus on the uncomfortableness of the chair, Kara's weight in his lap, the muted sound of the traffic beyond the windows. He nodded, that same hollow smile taut upon his lips, finger resting upon the T, stark black lines against a white page. A thorn, in a different shape, but no less piercing.

"He does have a day."

* * *

"All morning long. 'It's Thor's Day, it's Thor's Day.'" Loki crossed his arms and slunk against the steps, hating how awkward he was, gangly lines and angles. "They don't even believe in him nearly so much anymore."

His mother looked up from her spinning, thread shining and golden in her hands, and chuckled. "Your brother is young. His vanity will pass one day." She paused, her eyes bright and mischievous. "We only hope."

"He will simply find something new to crow about, something else to remind everyone how wonderful he is in all the realms." Loki tugged at the edge of his tunic, already beginning to fray at the hem, green tendrils snaking around his long fingers. "As if Father needs to be reminded."

"Oh Loki." Frigga sighed, an increasingly familiar sound as Loki and Thor were, at last, growing out of their awkward adolescence. Thor, of course, was growing taller and broad across the shoulders, while Loki's only gains seemed to be a voice that often betrayed him in its croaks and cracks.

At least Loki knew who was growing wiser of the two.

"You know how Father favors him. He asked Thor to accompany him this morning, but did he even look for me?"

Frigga raised one brow, the thread spinning away in her hands. "Thor and your father are simply more alike." Their voices broke into the once serene inner chamber no sooner than his mother spoke, and the tiniest smirk flitted across Loki's lips as he heard both shouting in anger. Frigga made a light clucking noise and shook her head. "Which you know is sometimes not a virtue."

"If Father shouted at me, at least it would mean he noticed me." Loki huffed and found a new hem to tug into non-existence.

"Your Father does notice, and he is proud of you, my dear. His need to check your brother's excesses is too distracting, sometimes." The last of the shimmering roving passed from his mother's fingers onto the wheel, and Frigga rose from her stool. "But your father and I love you both. You're our sons, how could we do anything else?" She chuckled and gently patted his cheek. "One of these eras you will finally realize your mother tells the truth."

"You tell me so very much. I suppose I will have to believe you eventually." Loki let her hand linger there. Even if his mother's doting raised eyebrows and a few guffaws from the more uncouth at court, Loki was thankful for at least the one ally among his parents.

"And your brother loves you too, even when he is being a bit of a boor." Frigga narrowed her eyes at the approach of the harsh, raised voices, the sharp crack of Gungnir's butt against the floor. "Just as you love him, even when you sulk."

"I do not sulk," Loki said, frowning as he realized how petulant his words sounded. He cleared his throat. "I brood, thoughtfully. But I do love Thor. I severely dislike him at times, that's all."

Frigga clasped him in her arms and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "Sometimes love and like have little to do with one another. It took nearly a thousand years before I liked your father. He was so very stubborn, and more so as a student."

Odd the voices that murmured at the seidr-wielding Prince were never directed against his seidr-wielding father who had more power in his remaining eye than Loki had in his entire being. And no one dare murmur even a word against his mother, who had taught his father all he knew of the art.

"Perhaps father and I are alike in that, at least." Loki was scarcely an ideal student himself, if only because he kept attempting things beyond his abilities. But how else should his knowledge expand, playing at cantrips? "Though there is something I have been trying to master with little to show for it."

'Oh?" His mother was perpetually offering her advice, often unbidden, but she could explain seidr better than any of his instructors. And bear with his frustration, tirades, and brooding with more grace than anyone should.

"I am trying to create a double. It… is not going well," Loki admitted. "It looks enough like me but I cannot even make it blink, much less fool anyone of reasonable intelligence into thinking it's me."

Frigga pressed a finger, lightly, to her lips. "Do you have a purpose for the double, besides mimicry?"

Loki pauses, brows furrowed. "No. I had thought skill should come first, before I attempted anything more."

His mother's laughter was gentle, not mocking. "It is that way in so many things, but not in seidr. As for this, you must have the will first, before your skills will go farther. Without a will, without a purpose, a double will be nothing more than an… elaborate shadow."

His double needed a task, then. Before Loki could begin to think of some small, trifling goal his brother stormed into the inner chamber, their father not long behind, bringing the storm into an often-abused sanctuary.

The rebuking words on his lips died as a slow smirk took their place. Purpose, his mother said? If gaining a fraction of peace and quiet, and silencing his brother was not a noble purpose, he did not know what was.

"Brother," Loki said, emerging from the shadows, his gaze sympathetic, his arms outstretched. "What quarrel do you and father have this time? Come, you seem most upset."

Their mother simply watched, her face betraying nothing. Loki may have wondered time and time again how Odin could have a son like him but he never doubted, not once, that he was Frigga's child.

"Our father is being a raging bilgesnipe! Come, brother, you are more skilled in words, perhaps you and mother can make him see reason." Thor reached for Loki's outstretched hands. Loki's fingers curled outwards, his smile softened, and there was only the faintest flicker as Thor passed _through _the double, whose arms were still outstretched. Thor's face barely had time to register the shock before his stumbling feet sent him tumbling to the floor.

Loki could hear the laughter bubbling at the edge of his mother's voice, and she pressed a hand to her lips not in shock or concern but in restraint. Whatever his father was about to bellow in the room shifted, quick as silver, to a startled glance between his sons.

The double dismissed with a wave of his hand, Loki, in all his nearly quivering, overjoyed solidity, reached out a solid hand to his brother. He hoped the faint quirk of his smile was sufficiently contrite. It was more restrained, at least, than mocking laughter.

"I am sorry, brother," he said, the hand still outstretched, gauging whether Thor would pull himself up or drag him down. "Now you know how I feel after the words 'Loki, you must see this new means of pummeling one's opponents into meal' escape your mouth."

"But it was you-"

"It was a very clever illusion. As if an illusion of me would be anything but clever." Loki smirked as Thor finally clasped his larger hand about his, squeezing it more tightly than he should. Loki grunted as Thor hoisted himself up and, to Loki's surprise and not small relief, clapped him hard across the shoulder.

"An illusion that fooled your own brother! Not as if it will do so again." He kept hold of Loki's hand, even as Loki attempted to pull away. "Come, we must show the Warriors Three! Fandral will never figure out which is the real you."

"You aren't angry?" Even if he shifted into a serpent, Loki did not think Thor would lose his hold. He allowed his brother to pull him away from the chamber, away from a beaming mother and a father who seemed to have forgotten an argument had darkened the golden halls only moments before.

"Why should I be angry?" Thor laughed, a low rumbling chortle that echoed off the gleaming walls. "Angry at my clever little brother? Just think about when it is not me you're deceiving, but a great flummoxed troll."

Loki allowed his brother's praise to warm him like sunlight, singing through his veins. His mother's smile was radiant and the twinkle in his father's eye was approval, possibly even pride. Odin nodded, and his thoughtful frown gave way to smile, if only for a moment.

"Well done, my son."

* * *

"Can I have a Karaday?" Thankfully, they could not stay on Thursday forever. There was his mother's day, a day that belonged to a decrepit Roman god that Thor insisted was actually Loki's, and then at last a day with no painful connotations.

"I think they're rather set on the days as they're named," Loki said as they looked upon the calendars and paper clocks. "I would be the first to wish we could change them."

Kara paused until she realized he had, in his roundabout way, said no. "Could I have one Karaday? Please?"

"Since you asked so nicely." He laughed and flipped through the calendar, pointing at random dates. "I think next Monday would be a lovely Karaday."

The honoree wrinkled her nose before her face beamed with a mini-epiphany. "My birthday! Could my birthday be Karaday?"

"I – I don't see why not." Loki's somewhat pained smile faltered as he flipped through the months, through the year that was to come, the year of the uncertain truce with the even more uncertain end. Spring fluttered beneath his fingers, summer cut across his thumb, and finally October 2013 settled heavy beneath his hands as if waiting to devour them both.

"My birthday isn't for all those days?" Kara's eyes were wide, her lips distinctly downturned. If she could simply have ripped the months out, and time with it, she would have.

"It's only-" Loki paused, trying to count the days down, trying to ignore the weight that settled on his chest, knowing how swift 346 days would fly. He should have asked Stark for five years, for ten, for a year was a breath, a blink, it was-

"It's forever!" Kara crossed her arms across her chest, no longer smitten with her day, and as Loki wrapped his arms around her shoulders he felt time snatch away another second, another moment.

A year was nothing.

A year was an eternity.


	2. November

Author's Note: Before the story things, kids, just something even more important. For any readers in New York and New Jersey, or with family there who were impacted, you have so many thoughts with you right now, and help coming however we can send it. These disasters are so devastating (personal note: my town was hit in the 2011 tornado outbreaks and we're still recovering), but a new normality does come back eventually. And it seems the storm brought out some *amazing* heroes in real life.

So many thanks to my betas, Jade, Chipper, and Majoline. They made this chapter readable and saved hundreds of commas from abuse. They should seriously have a commercial, complete with a sad Sarah McLachlan song.

* * *

There were still too many empty places in the city. Too many gaps and hollows and voids from too many attacks and disasters. Even if new things rose in their place, it didn't seem enough. To Tony, there were too many blanks and not nearly enough things to ever fill them in.

Not that it stopped New Yorkers from trying.

Square patches of dirt that should have been buildings weren't because money ran out or was slow in coming or paperwork ground construction to a halt. Now they had become little forests, with old men hawking trees on Thanksgiving morning before they closed up shop for a tiny turkey and a defrosted pie. Or they sprouted villages of brightly colored tents, where vendors hawked whatever they could sell – steamed hot dogs, tamales, kitschy shirts, halfway decent coffee – anything that would earn a few dollars and put something in those places until something more permanent came along.

Not like another intergalactic villain or all-too-human terrorist or even nature wouldn't try to destroy whatever rose up in all those gaps.

At least it didn't unnerve him, Christ, terrify him the way it did before. One day the Avengers Initiative was just some half-cocked scheme of Fury's he wasn't even supposed to join, the next he was trying to save his city from an invader who didn't really seem to want the damn place at all. They won, they had their shawarma, said a welcome goodbye to Thor and his miscreant little brother, and it was all supposed to be fine.

Except it wasn't.

He should have known when the nightmares started. In Tony's dreams the city burned and the world crumbled and fell; the people he knew and gave a crap about died in horrible, unimaginable ways. He saw the Chitauri on their gliders, their bolts of light clipping the wings of Pepper's jet. He saw the plane spiral with sickening slowness to Earth; he heard her scream. He remembered his own fall, the cold and the darkness, but in his nightmares there was no Hulk to catch him.

He slipped back into old habits. Bad habits. The Avengers were gone, Pepper was consumed with the recovery efforts, and Tony insisted he was fine. He maintained the position that what happened was nothing and it would be really nice if people stopped making such a big fucking deal about it, to borrow a phrase from a politician who minced words less than he did. Tony threw himself into his work, making one suit, then another, and then another, until he had an entire army of suits, all of whom were empty and hollow as he was.

It was at a charity benefit, something Pepper had poured herself into like Tony had started pouring bottles into himself. He had one, two - or a lot - too many and had snapped, just lost it, when some stuffed shirt called him a hero. From the news reports and Tweets and dim memories, he'd decked the man, cursed him out, then nearly stumbled off the rooftop party if Pepper and Rhodey hadn't pulled him back.

There was a cold shower after they dragged him home, after which Pepper poured out every last bottle in his bar. She told him then in no uncertain terms she was getting Tony help, whether he wanted it or not. Pepper didn't have an arc reactor; she didn't have a suit; she just had herself, that was all Pepper ever really needed.

And she had Tony, she reminded him, and for the first time since Phil's funeral she cried, and for a while neither of them could stop. And even if he was red-eyed and blotchy and in the throes of the worst hangover he'd ever had, Tony felt the tiniest spark of optimism that didn't come at the bottom of a glass.

Pepper left the rebuilding of New York to less gifted but still capable hands. She organized him like she did his company. Bed by midnight. Up by 8 a.m. A diet that didn't consist of two-day old pizza punctuated by days of nothing at all. Work in his lab that was actual work, not just avoidance with power tools. And when he woke up at 3 a.m., sweating and shaking, Pepper was there, and she wouldn't take "it's nothing" for an answer.

He resented it, at first, because he was Tony Stark and he wasn't going to be treated like a child, managed like one of Pepper's assistants. He brought out the reserve bottles Pepper had no hope of finding and slunk off to the lab in the dead of night.

The next morning he woke up face first on the concrete, Pepper kicking him over with her very expensive heels. He'd screamed, he'd yelled that almost losing his city, his world, his life – almost losing her – wasn't something an early bedtime and some kale could fix. Pepper yelled that she was losing him a little more each day, and how was it possibly fair to her to put her through the kind of grief that was already consuming him.

Tony, once he was reasonably sober, dialed the number of the S.H.I.E.L.D. psychologist, someone who wouldn't commit him when he started talking about gods and monsters. He thought she was an idiot at first, a well-meaning idiot and a soft scientist, for God's sake. But the more he talked, the more he gave – to her, to Pepper – the less hollow he felt. The rubble inside was knocked away, and even if the land was empty, it wasn't so much a gaping maw as a place where anything was possible.

And then when Loki and the Chitauri came back, Tony managed not to fall apart. And when the world was safe, again, he swallowed his pride and he asked everyone to stay. True, there was a beaten but pissed-off demigod loose somewhere, so it made sense keeping the gang together. Maybe Pepper worked her magic behind the scenes or maybe they were all just taken with his charm, but they all said yes.

In those two years, Tony had stepped back from the brink he always seemed to be falling into. So...maybe it wasn't completely crazy to think Loki could begin to do the same.

Okay, it was completely insane. Backsliding into the bottle wasn't exactly the same as trying to take over the world. But they'd both left carnage in their wake, lives and worlds wrecked in their own way.

Who was Tony to let this chance go?

* * *

Only a supervillain could look intimidating while a four-year-old kid with a bright blue knit monstrosity on her head practically yanked his arm down to the ground as she tried to wriggle free.

"Daaaaaaad! It's Iron Man!"

"So it is. If we close our eyes, maybe he'll go away." Kara squirmed and tugged but Loki didn't give, his eyes very much open and very much glaring in Tony's direction.

"Relax, Reindeer Games. It's just me. Harmless, suitless me." Tony wiggled his fingers at Loki's tenacious offspring. "Hiya kid. What are you and your dad up to?"

"Suitless, perhaps, but I doubt you are what one would ever call harmless." There might not be S.H.I.E.L.D. agents hiding in the bushes, but Loki was sure as hell acting like there were. And either Kara was stronger than she looked or Loki's paranoia was finite, as the little mass of coat and boots and curls came hurling at Tony.

"We had to go to the store cause daddy's making a ca- a cassa- cause daddy's making the green bean thing to bring to Thanksgiving with Stephen and George and Connie and Oscar and Alice and I asked if we could get donuts and we got donuts but daddy didn't let me get a bear donut because he's mean." Kara remembered to breathe and Tony smirked as he watched Loki's face twist in embarrassed indignation. "Where's Captain America?"

"I told them to get Thanksgiving catered but no, there's a gaggle of people in my kitchen who hopefully aren't burning the place down. So Cap's probably trying to make an apple pie, I'm sure." Tony grinned but was surprised to get a scowl not only from Mr. Sourpuss, but a Sourpuss Junior. "Wait. Are you seriously mad Cap's not here?"

Kara pursed her lips. "I'm a little mad. And maybe serious." Tony valiantly tried to stifle his laughter just in case Loki finally lost whatever patience he had and blasted him into next week. "You should bring him next time."

"Will do." Tony raised an eyebrow. Adopted or not, the annoyed little girl had a damn uncanny resemblance to a certain cranky Norse god. "She certainly knows what she wants."

"She doesn't suffer fools lightly." Loki crossed his arms across his chest. "I can't imagine where she picked that up from. What in the world do you want Stark?"

"Oh, there's a lot of things. A comfortable pair of socks, the cover of GQ – again, the Nobel Peace Prize. They're working on that. But we could use a little chat." Tony looked down to Kara, poking at his shoes with her tiny blue boots, and he suddenly wished he'd brought Cap because, as if this conversation already wasn't ridiculously awkward, having it in earshot of the little girl only ratcheted his discomfort up to an 11.

"Daddy needs to have a talk," Loki said to the little third wheel and it still jarred Tony six ways to Sunday to hear him say that word, even if Tony was the Avenger who doubted it the least. He handed his phone to a clearly appeased Kara. "Why don't you go sit over there and try to beat my score on Fruit Ninja and, if you're very good, we'll go get that bear claw."

Kara ran to the bench so fast Tony expected to hear sonic booms.

"As I've just promised my child a donut bigger than her head, this had best be a matter of life or death. If it's not, I'm sure that could be easily arranged."

Tony hadn't backed down from Loki when he had his Glow Stick of Destiny; he sure as hell wasn't going to cave when the demigod was only packing some cans of cream of mushroom soup. That was besides the fact doing more than hurling insults would make the agreement null and void.

"Beyond the fact that Pepper would beyond furious if her kitchen dictatorship doesn't result in the perfect Thanksgiving, I want to be sure everyone in the city can suffer from indigestion and mediocre football in peace and quiet."

"Let's see, Stark. Doom is dealing with some unexpected technical difficulties in Latveria. I just spent ten minutes arguing with a slack-jawed teenager about whether I needed fresh green beans or canned. The only evil I have planned is plotting Ryan Seacrest's slow and painful death post-parade, but I think that's rather a shared sentiment. I think whatever you and your lot have planned, or however the masses plan to spend today indulging in gluttony, you're safe from any interruption today." Loki narrowed his eyes. "You really needed to come down from your lofty heights to mine to figure that out?"

"You know, I'm really getting more a God of Pithy Snark vibe from you rather than this whole God of Lies… thing. Though if I was in your little pantheon – which could so bring the world back to polytheism – I'd beat you on the withering sarcasm front." Tony shuffled his feet, wishing the thankfully few passers-by would just pass by already. "It's been a few weeks since we've seen you. You don't write, you don't call. You don't smash down any buildings, which I admit, is a nice change. But besides the fact it's my ass, in theory, on the line with this whole deal, it's more like this city's ass on the line. A lot of people would really like it if one less megalomaniac tried to blow their homes up. So I want to be sure you're really in on this deal before you have the chance to screw it up."

Loki's face twisted into that oh-so familiar look of smug, mocking pity, and Tony wondered, probably not for the last time, if punching said face would constitute a breach of their little agreement. "Such noble sentiment, but I somehow wonder if you aren't more concerned what your one-eyed overlord is going to do if you fail, or if he catches wind of our détente."

Tony laughed, the sound as sharp and bitter as the breeze that rustled the few stubborn leaves clinging to the branches overhead. "You think I'm worried about Fury? Compared to some of the truly lovely people I've had to deal with in my life, you included, Fury is a fluffy bunny in an eyepatch. And I think between us, I'm not the one with the most to lose."

"At least I act as if she's something to lose."

Tony blinked and shook his head. "Excuse me?"

"Even the petty thieves in this city know you're Iron Man. I fell from a void in the universe and it took me moments to know who to target, and just where I should strike him. You have just as much at stake as me, and yet it's not the human who is breathtakingly more discrete."

Tony gave Loki a tight little smile. "You done there?"

"For the moment."

"Okay. A, I'm not going to hide being Iron Man. You're a little less ashamed when you're one of the good guys. B, what part of my personality is discrete? And C, and I hate to say this, but even if I hid behind the suit, someone would find out. They always do. At least this way they know if they mess with me, or my stuff, they're in for a world of hurt."

Loki snorted, but Tony had seen his hands tighten, just a bit, at point C. "No wonder Thor loves this realm so much. You all are such slaves to sentiment. You wear your heart on your sleeve."

"Yeah, well at least it means I have one. Because without them, I don't." Without Pepper, without Rhodey, hell, without everybody, Tony was as hollow as his suit. "And that's a trade-off that might really suck sometimes when it puts them in danger, but it just makes me want to protect them even more. And then you start seeing they aren't the only ones who need protecting. It's a vicious cycle of unselfishness, but it's better than the alternative."

"Which I'm assuming would be me."

"Basically. Well, more the you that was a selfish asshole who tried to bring the Earth down with you twice. But the you I'm talking to now, even if you're still an asshole, has two things that might just make a difference."

"And what would that be? A spacious apartment and sophisticated wardrobe?"

"You don't ever stop, do you?" Tony wondered, briefly, if this is what Pepper's life was like. "And even though, for an extraterrestrial, you have impeccable taste in fashion, you damn well know what I mean. You have a second chance. And you have something maybe even more important." That something happily kicked her booted feet up and down as she mashed purposely on Loki's phone, giggling and squealing every few minutes. "You have someone to make that second chance mean a hell of a lot more."

"Why thank you, Stark, for your enlightening observation." Loki's words were sharp but not jagged, the edges not rounded but at least blunted. "I never would have thought such a thing without your help." Loki leaned in, and Tony did his damndest to stand tall against the lanky, leaning man. "I have no love for you. I have a handful of things that keep me from completely hating this miserable realm. But for her, and only for her, I will try to uphold our little bargain."

"Nuh-uh," Tony retorted, pushing a finger against Loki's chest, praying it came back still attached. "We have a saying here on this miserable realm: Do, or do not. There is no try. If I'm not half-assing this, you don't get to either."

"And what human sage came up with that truly insightful bit of wisdom," Loki asked, the sarcasm practically oozing from every syllable.

"Master…you know, the name really isn't important," Tony muttered from beneath his hand, which had survived its encounter intact. "But seriously, trying is for the weak, which doesn't include either of us. Well, it definitely doesn't include me." Tony cleared his throat, finding it suddenly dry. "I wouldn't have made the deal in the first place, or come back here, if I didn't think at least part of you could do something… different." Something less destructive. Maybe even decent.

Maybe whatever tiny shred was left of Tony's naïveté would even hope for something good.

"Your faith in me is touching," Loki said, eyes clearly wanting to roll out of their sockets. "But what if it's entirely misplaced?"

"You saying 'what if' makes me think it's not." Tony took a step back as the champion of slicing fruit with virtual swords ran back, brandishing her high score and a brilliant smile, to Loki. "And if it is, we've got a Hulk for that."

"Thank you so much for reminding me." Loki's deadpan scowl warmed to a wry smile as he took the phone, admitting Kara was, indeed, the better ninja. "As much as I'd love to continue this conversation, I believe we have a bear claw to purchase."

Kara let out a shriek of joy and Tony did not envy Loki one bit the imminent sugar rush he would be facing.

"Bye!" If it was Steve here, it'd be a damn hard choice between saying goodbye and getting that donut. It was nice Tony knew where he stood. "Tell Captain America Happy Thanksgiving!"

"If he doesn't burn down the kitchen I will." Tony patted the blue hat-like thing on her head as Kara hugged his knee. "You and your dad have a good Thanksgiving too, okay? Make sure you watch the parade and something with Charlie Brown." Tony smirked as Kara ran back to Loki and the promise of even more unhealthy breakfast foods. "Just remember what it's all about. Being thankful, and stuffing yourself full of turkey."

"Oh, I've had enough of feasts for one life," Loki said with a dismissive shake of his head. And even if he didn't say anything about gratitude, maybe nothing needed to be said. Not when she was right there, tugging at her father's hand. "Just what are you thankful for?"

"I'm here. That's good enough," Tony said. But what he was really thankful for was this year, this year of wonders and chances and the tiniest of hopes.

He was thankful.

Thankful... and absolutely terrified.


	3. December

First, I am so sorry for the delay! Things have been rough the past month, and my creativity's been on the wane. So thanks for being patient, and I hope you enjoy this chapter! There's lots of Loki and Kara fluff (finally!) a Yuletide flashback, and feels with Thor and Bruce.

And major, major thanks to my betas, Amanda, Jade, and Majoline, for not only helping whip this chapter into shape, but with info on the Wild Hunt, the central myth behind Yule and for brainstorming with me on the little glimpse of Yuletide Past.

And I hope Loki's rant doesn't offend anyone. It was written by a devout Episcopalian who is very much looking forward to Advent, if that helps. :)

* * *

If Loki heard one more saccharine carol or was wished another disgustingly cheerful Merry Christmas, the deal was off, and he would merrily burn every last tree, wreath, and dancing animatronic creation into ashes.

If only Kara didn't have a baffling love for all the glitter and sparkle that had all but infested the city. The humans should be so grateful they had so tiny a savior. That shouldn't be so hard, as evidently that was how their theology worked nowadays.

"Can we go to the store after Santa?" Kara traced little circles in the snow with her boots, humming a song about snowmen or candy canes or something else that had nothing to do with Yule at all.

Loki didn't know which was worse: being accosted with the bitter reminder on every street corner, or how staggeringly wrong it all was.

"Daddy is getting a rather miserable headache. Maybe we'll go tomorrow." He rubbed at his temple and looked at the line before them, a mere handful compared to the veritable host they had slogged through for an hour. "Or perhaps in January."

"But I have to get you a present!"

"All you have to give me, dear, is some peace and quiet, and that will be the most wonderful gift of all." Loki tried to manage a smile as Kara blinked, biting at her lip.

"Do I have to wrap it?" Her accidental cleverness earned a chuckle, and the throbbing behind his eyes ebbed.

"No, no. Besides, wrapping makes noise, and that just defeats the purpose." He noticed a mousy blond woman in front of him, a small boy hanging off her hand, nodding along with every word.

"Good for you. Christmas has gotten so far away from what it's really about. I wish we didn't even have to come here," she replied, however unwanted. "Peace to all men. That's what this season is about."

Loki's shoulders shook, not at all like a bowl full of jelly, and a low laugh escaped his lips. "Peace? We just waited in a line with at least one knock down fight between so-called adults and only the sounds of screeching children for distraction. All around us, people are buying people they don't particularly like things they don't need with money they don't have. If peace was a reason for all this supposed merriment, it was relegated quite far down the list."

The woman shook her head and gave him an almost pitiful look. "If you're not a believer, you don't understand."

Loki smirked, his smile showing just a flash of teeth. "Oh, I'm a believer, in things you could not possibly begin to comprehend." He pressed a hand to Kara's shoulder. "Dear one, be a good girl and cover your ears? Daddy has to give a little lesson."

Beaming, Kara stuck her fingers in her ears and began to sing, halfway in tune, about Frosty the Oddly Round Snow Creature.

"As for the reason behind this ever so trying season, it is not about your newborn monotheistic god, or the fat old man in the chair, or such sentiment as hope or good cheer. The first cause, you sanctimonious troll, was fear, the sensible fear mortals once had for things beyond their understanding. You can hang your lights and sing your songs and sit in a thousand laps but when the wind howls and the Hunt comes riding-"

"The Hunt? It's Santa and his reindeer, moron." The child next in line stepped up, his face devoid of intellectual activity or any sort of redeeming feature.

"Oh yes, Jolly Old Saint Nick. The lovely little fiction you spun for yourselves so you wouldn't be terrified by the Allfather and his eight-legged steed, riding upon the wind, who had no patience for pitiful excuses for human beings like you. You leave this so called Santa cookies and hope he doesn't leave you coal?" Loki's laughter was high, brittle, and more than one parent was pulling their child away as fast as they could. "When you hear something on your roof or at your door on Christmas, I hope all of you have the sense to cower in your beds and hope he grants you the gift of living another day."

The woman who sparked his impromptu history lesson was nowhere to be found. Loki heard children bawling, more than one expletive hurled in his direction, and a warm sort of glow filled him from within, as if his tirade had made his heart grow a few sizes.

"All done," he said as he gently pulled Kara's hands from her ears and nudged her forward, to the empty space where a line had once stood. With a shriek, she clapped her hands as if it was already Christmas morning and ran to sit on Santa's lap.

"Not like I haven't wanted to let a customer have it, but have a little Christmas spirit, would you?" The elf behind the camera fidgeted as he waited for Kara's somewhat rambling list to wind to an end.

Kara's smile couldn't be brighter as the camera flashed, and Santa either hadn't heard Loki's rant or was was doing a remarkable job soldering on. Loki handed over the ten dollars for the photo, and on a inexplicable whim, handed the man (likely a starving writer or an actor, if Stephen and George's comments about the holiday help were true) a fifty dollar bill.

"You know, I think I will have a bit of Christmas cheer after all."

* * *

The honking horns were like trumpets. Sullen teenagers dragged from their homes by equally miserable parents sang sweet carols of resentment. The drivers cutting one another off in search of parking spaces, parents wrestling for the last toy on the shelf, store workers looking as if they wanted to strangle every last person with ribbon all filled Loki's heart with a perverse yet genuine Christmas spirit.

Yule's time had passed, and perhaps that was a small mercy, but Loki thought he could learn to rather like Christmas. Horrible sweaters, shoppers trampling one another in the wee hours of the morning, snarled traffic – the season wasn't about peace. It was about chaos, in all its glory.

And so in a fit of newfound enthusiasm, Loki and Kara had embarked on a whirlwind day of seasonal merriment after the utterly satisfying experience of the morning. Loki bought what seemed like half a store's worth of Christmas decorations in shades of blue and silver. They had stopped for cocoa, cookies, roasted chestnuts, and every delectable that caught their eye on a rambling, leisurely stroll through a Central Park lost in a layer of fresh-fallen snow.

Kara had even talked him into ice skating in the park's massive rink, a task he thought should be far easier given his heritage, but no sooner did he step out on the ice than he fell, unceremoniously, onto his posterior.

Kara giggled, high-pitched and almost hiccupping, as she held onto the gate. "I'm afraid I'm not going to be very much help," he said, using the subtlest magic and whatever leverage his hands could find to pull himself up. His ankles wobbled but they held as he made a few cautious glides forward, holding out a hand to Kara, who took it without hesitation.

To their credit, Loki and Kara only did one lap around the rink clutching onto the side rail. Even if their forays into the center often ended in one or both of them tumbling to the ice, the only hurt was to their dignity.

Although there was a good deal more hurt given to the would be figure skater who nearly knocked Kara over with an ill-chosen lutz. With the subtlest flick of his hand, her skates wedged in the ice and she plunged down, face forward, but Loki was certain her nose would heal, given time.

In a last burst of masochistic merriment, Loki even bought a tree on the way home, from a lot just a few blocks south of their apartment. He insisted he could carry it home, but his arms were quivering by the time he dragged it up the stairs and set it in the flimsy metal stand.

"It's so pretty! And it smells good! Can we decorate it now?" Kara buried her nose in the thick branches, petting the fragrant green bristles.

Loki slumped down onto the couch, covered in tiny green needles, hands dotted with sap. "We'll decorate it tomorrow, when Daddy can move his arms again. What do you say we watch a little TV and then we'll go to bed."

"Can we watch Charlie Brown Christmas? Please!" Kara launched herself from the tree and into his lap as the TV flickered to life. Loki groaned; they'd watched the cartoon at least a dozen times by now.

"Again? It isn't going to change the more we watch it," Loki said as he pulled the recording up anyway.

"I know," said Kara, her head resting against his side as the now familiar piano medley began. "That's why I like it."

At least some things time never altered, Loki thought, as a sleepy, contented calm descended on the pine-scented living room like falling snow.

* * *

The winter's night was anything but still. Even if the bitter winds had calmed as the host had settled for the night, the clopping of hooves and steady rhythm of the horses' hot breath gave clear indication that the Hunt, indeed, had returned.

But a mortal would have to venture perilously close before he could hear the two newest and slightest voices beneath the quiet roar of the host at rest.

"In the middle of the road!" Thor was scarcely above his father's knee but his small voice was bold for one so small. Nearly buried in white-dusted furs, he clenched a branch between his legs as he galloped across the snow towards the one in his way.

"M'not in road!" The smaller bundle of furs and black hair that was Loki shook his head. "Don't wanna move!"

Frigga chuckled and set down her spindle, pale silver wisps rising into the air. Woe betide to any woman without her weaving in her hand the on the icy nights the All-Mother and All-Father rode. She watched as Thor stumbled to a halt and dropped his wooden mount. "Pretend there's a road," he said, as if the only problem was Loki's temporary lack of imagination. "Loki, you're doing it wrong! If you don't move, I'm going to have to get you. And then you'll be dead."

"'M not gonna be dead! You can't catch me!" Oh, and then Loki did move, his tiny legs barely coming over the drifts, and Thor's frustration gave way to unrestrained glee at the chase. His red cloak fluttering behind him, Thor leapt onto his brother, knocking them both into the white drifts. Loki shrieked, and once he wriggled free, he tackled Thor with equal abandon.

"It's a comfort to know they'll never lack for eagerness." Odin's hand pressed upon her shoulder, and Frigga caught the scent of hearth smoke upon him. "The Norns help whatever soul who will refuse to get out of their way."

"You know that will include us one day." Frigga chuckled as she stood from her throne, seeing the bag in Odin's hand, burgeoning with oats, carrots, and sugar, mortal gifts of faith and fealty. The family who bestowed them would be amply rewarded. "I am glad you let them come, as small as they are. One day this shall be their task."

A day still some distance off, Frigga thought, as Loki now sat blissfully in the snow, scooping it into his arms. Thor had decided his stick was better as a sword against the mortal threat of the trees.

"I'd another reason for bringing them," Odin said, and Frigga's brow furrowed. Her husband often only gave his reasons when they failed. "I wondered if Loki's nature, his true nature, might show itself here."

"Far from the prying eyes of court?" There had been more than a few raised eyebrows when Frigga presented the little dark-haired infant; she was oddly pleased when rumors of Odin's amorous excesses began flitting about soon after. "I do like having them with us, but why not withdraw the spell in our chambers? We may as well be on Midgard for all our hangers on would know."

Odin's good eye looked ruefully towards their sons, who only ever knew that they were brothers and that they were loved. "I have tried. Either I cannot change him, or he will not change. I've no doubt in your vision, but I think this is how he shall be for some time."

"Then let him simply be our son, and when the Norns decree he should know the truth for himself, we'll soften the blow as best we can." Frigga reached out and took her husband's hand. "Not even you can take a sword to fate."

"No, but you cannot blame me for wanting to trim it for our benefit," Odin said, lifting her hand to his lips. His cape rose and fluttered as he hefted the farmer's gifts in the other. "I should see that the host is fed."

"Let the boys tend to the mounts. I think they can manage the task, and it would be good for them to be occupied." Frigga's hand rested upon the curve of her husband's shoulder, fingers brushing soft against cool armor. Odin's face warmed with his smile, his single eye brilliant and twinkling like one of Midgard's stars.

"And what should we do while they are so occupied?" Odin's hand curved around the small of her back, and she tilted her head to blue-tinged heavens, the moon bright against the shadows of bare branches and pendant sprigs of mistletoe.

"Hmmm." The wind carried the boys' laughter through the trees, fluttering across the snow, filling her heart with love and a bone-deep longing. For a child of both her blood and of her heart. "I think, husband, I should like another son."

* * *

"Does brooding run in the family now?"

Thor looked miserably on the city from the tower balcony. Bruce might not be the best one to cheer up a depressed demigod. On the other hand, at least it was a quiet awkwardness, unlike Steve's slightly drunken and very tone deaf "Baby It's Cold Outside."

"A funny thing you should mention family," Thor said, turning back towards Bruce, shoulders slumped.

"Okay, less funny, more you seemed you needed to talk about it." Bruce liked to think every now and then he knew people half as well as he knew their atoms. "The holidays can be rough enough on us regular humans. So I figured with all your domestic drama, you might not feel so merry."

"It should not be so sad a time." Thor nursed his glass of mead, and if there was anyone who shouldn't nurse a glass of anything, it was Thor. "Yule was the time of the Hunt, to reward the faithful, strike fear into the rest-"

"Christmas as a time of terror?" Bruce spun his glass of eggnog in his hands. "That's...cheerful."

"Things have certainly changed, but family was no less important than." A sad little smile did nothing to brighten Thor's expression. "When we came to Midgard, we were always together. Father would tell stories of his battles before we were born, and I could not wait for the time when it would be my Hunt. I would have tales to tell, sons of my own, and perhaps Loki there besides me, as he always was. And now…."

"Now things aren't what you thought they would be. That's kinda the way things happen." Bruce smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "I didn't think I'd ever be moonlighting as the Other Guy, but I'm dealing with it."

"I do not think we Asgardians handle change so well. And when it comes to my brother…" No one would ever say Thor handled Loki well, least of all Thor.

"Dealing with your brother requires patience. Occasionally blunt force." Bruce rubbed at the back of his neck as he was pretty sure the other guy was basking in happy memories. "But Loki's been less ragey lately, and you're still going to get your day with him. That's not exactly coal in your proverbial stocking."

"I feel as if I know him less than I did when he first went mad. His rage, at least, I could understand." If anyone should have been happy about Loki's sudden shift in priorities, from destroying the world to watching Disney Channel, it should have been Thor. But Thor hadn't exactly been walking on rainbows the past month, even if he hadn't gone so far as to brood out on the balcony. "But now this child has gone and changed him, and even should it be for the better, it is as if my brother is no longer a man I know."

"Oh man." Loki being less of a bastard was supposed to be good, no questions asked. Sure, Clint wouldn't be liking the new Loki anytime soon, but they'd all just assumed Thor would come to like his brother's upgraded personality. "So your brother's a little different now. He has a kid, lives in New York, probably cheats on the crosswords in the morning. So maybe you don't know him now. But maybe you'll get to know Loki 2.0. And he might turn out not to be so bad. Literally."

Thor paused, looking into the city below, and Bruce swore he was looking to the Heights, as if he could just know where his brother was. That or Thor had finally cracked open a map of New York. "Perhaps Loki will never wish to think of me as his brother again. I would like to hope, at least, one day he will no longer regard me as his enemy." Thor clapped a hand on Bruce, and nearly sent him into the floor below. "It might not be family, but it would be a start."

Bruce chuckled through the shooting pains in his shoulder. "Hey, you've got another family here, too." Inside the warm glow of the tower, Tony and Pepper were doing something just this side of PG-13 under the mistletoe; Steve showed no sign of stopping his one man Christmas musical; and Natasha was evidently showing Clint how to use tinsel as a deadly weapon. "What do you say we help them put the fun in dysfunctional?"


	4. January

**Author's Note: ** Here is a belated holiday gift! I am so sorry on the pace, yet again - break has been manic with the holidays and family, especially my two little nephews, and this is going up much later than I hoped. In my own list for the new year, I might need to add "timly fic updates" to the list! But thank you, everyone, for being patient, and here's the next installment. Hope you all have been having a very happy (or simply calm and peaceful) holiday season, and best wishes for a brighter new year to all my readers!

And very special wishes to my betas, as always, Amanda, Jade, and Majoline, for trimming the ribbon and bells on this chapter! Any lingering mistakes are solely mea culpa.

* * *

Maybe it was better not to see gods, even if they weren't exactly real. They lost a little of their grandeur when they were sitting in a plush chair, sipping from an oversized mug and reading a Christie's catalog.

"Don't you look cozy?" Bruce caught a whiff of something sweet and fragrant, not acrid and bitter. "I didn't exactly peg you as a tea man. I was thinking more like double shots of espresso."

"So very sorry to break the spell," Loki spat, his sarcasm and the flimsy paper as impenetrable as Steve's shield. "I rather prefer mischief and lies, not manic hyper-caffeination. Can I possibly help you?" Loki snapped the catalog shut, letting it fall to the table. "Or better yet, can you realize whatever possessed you to find me is misguided and dangerous, for all our sakes?"

Bruce knew what it was like to have Loki's magic buzzing around in his mind like a swarm of angry if uncoordinated mosquitos. And even if his mojo had more focus today, it only had a fraction of its power, compared to before, when he'd ripped the Other Guy out of him, unwanted and uncontrollable.

Bruce grinned and scratched at his ear, the buzz fading to an annoying but tolerable hum. "Only dangerous if you throw a tantrum and smash your nice little mug. Me, I just came to have a cup of tea and a little talk."

"And what if I oh-so politely decline?"

"Then I might have to ask not so politely."

Loki leaned forward, fingers curling almost predatorily around his mug. "Since you seem to insist on ruining what had otherwise been a pleasant morning, the least you can do is to keep the discomfort somewhat brief."

Bruce blinked owlishly, fingers fumbling at the edge of his glasses. "I think there was a 'please join me' somewhere in the middle of that." He caught the light, floral notes of Loki's tea. "First flush darjeeling. Nice to see you have a taste for megalomania and good tea. I'm more an Assam guy myself."

Loki raised an eyebrow. "A detail I'll have to recall if I ever have you over for a cup. So, which one of your associates put you up to this? Stark? Your little bird?"

"Tony just told me where you were. And if Clint wanted to tell you something, he'd do it himself. Probably with an arrow." Bruce chuckled and sank down into the plush, overstuffed chair across the table. "Let's just say I know sometimes you need the conversations you least want to have."

"Tell me, is this truly a private conversation?" The edges of Loki's lips curled above the brim of his mug. "Or can I expect to be accosted by the S.H.I.E.L. you've hidden away behind the bakery counter?"

"No one here but me." Bruce sipped calmly at his own mug, setting it down into the no man's land strewn with napkins, crosswords, and teaspoons. "Backup seemed a little...much."

"How very considerate of you."

Bruce pushed a sugar packet between his fingers as he lurched straight into the land-mine strewn conversation. "So, did you and Kara have a good Christmas? Or Yule, or the Hunt, or whatever you call it?"

Loki's gaze wavered between maliciousness and a thinly feigned boredom. "We had a marvelous Christmas. So marvelous, in fact, my heart grew three sizes."

"No, it didn't." Bruce's little grin almost hurt as he sipped at his mug

"Of course not." Real or not, the disinterest slipped away from Loki's glare. "I know you're presumably what passes for intelligent on this planet, but how, exactly, do you know about the Hunt?"

Bruce chuckled, rubbing at his chin. "I might have a Ph.D, but I'm not above Wikipedia. I, ah, actually had a more direct source."

"Thor." Trust Loki to turn his brother's name into a metaphorical four-letter word. "And with what sort of stories of our childhood did he regale you?"

"He wasn't really regaling." Bruce raised a single brow, running a surprisingly dry palm across his lips. "Regaling usually means you're happy. This might be none of my business-"

"Oh, it is none of your business-" Loki's hands gripped the table so tightly Bruce swore he could hear the wood crack.

"Leave breaking things to me, okay?" Bruce leaned across the table, aiming for a comforting sort of threatening, or a threatening sort of comfort. "You can talk with me over tea, or with the Other Guy. And you don't want to know what he likes to drink. But it was Christmas, or whatever it is you guys call it, and Thor was missing his family. A little sad he's the only one of us who really has one, and it's pretty much you."

Loki loosened his death grip on the table. "I don't know what it will take to make any of you understand, but we are not family."

Bruce felt a throbbing behind his eye that had nothing to do with the Other Guy and everything to do with divine family drama. "Yeah, Thor mentioned you two aren't exactly biologically related. But you realize coming from someone who adopted a little girl, what you just said makes less sense than you usually do. Which isn't much."

"Thor may have told you I was adopted." Loki's words stung like little barbs, lodging beneath his skin. "Did he also tell you I was stolen, changed, lied to my entire life, made to be a pawn in a political game that could not possibly be won?"

Bruce blinked. "Not so much, but you do tend to be...a little dramatic about the details."

Loki's laugh, brittle and bitter, drew more than a few stares. "Of all the people to learn the dark truths of the House of Odin, it's the fellow monster."

"Hey, I took out Harlem. You tried to take out the entire planet." Bruce tilted his head, the words tasting bitter and ashen as soon as he spoke them. "Moral arithmetics aside, how am I more qualified to be any kind of judge? I thought you and Tony had the unspoken bond."

"Stark may see what similarities he cares to see, but he could not possibly comprehend this." Loki pushed at his mug, for a moment his gaze focuses on the tea sloshing across the brim onto the table. "You look just like the rest of them, but beneath, truly, you are nothing but icy fury, wanting nothing but to avenge every wrong, every slight of the universe against you, even if doing so proves every horrific thing you heard about your kind since you were but a child."

Bruce slowly slid his glasses on, peering in confusion over the wire rim. "You know, I don't think that speech was about me at all. When you say kind, you mean less human looking aliens, yes?"

"Your kind called them - called us the frost giants." Bruce could hear the tension between pronouns, and for a moment he felt for Loki, because he knew that battle, that struggle between us and them, between self and other. "We had a fondness for taking over this pathetic realm, until the Allfather put a stop to that and waged war upon our world, and took me for a prize."

"If he took you for a prize, why lie to you? Why didn't he just parade you through the streets, or whatever it is you guys do up there?" Bruce was a little surprised they even took prisoners alive. Maybe they made exceptions for really small prisoners.

If there was mercy in Odin's actions, Loki didn't see it. "Because it was not enough for him to take an abandoned child, he had to treat me as if I was something to do with however he wished."

"Wait, were you abandoned or were you a prize?" Trying to get the truth out of Loki, Bruce imagined, was an exercise in futility, if not hazardous to the point of fatality. But that last admission had an edge of painful, accidental honesty. The brittle, cold fury in those blue eyes only confirmed it. "Because if it was the first one, as horrible as it is being lied to, it's a little better than being dead."

"I think at times I should have preferred death." Loki slunk back into the oversized chair, his gaze not on Bruce or the room or even the planet, but somewhere far, far away. "If he wanted to show mercy, he should have left things well enough alone."

It wasn't exactly a secret that Loki had some homicidal urges. But suicidal? That was new - or rather, old - a raw wound, festering around the edges. Empathy pulled heavy and unbidden, and Bruce understood for a fleeting moment why Tony took on this ludicrous little project.

"You know what, I get the death wish. I get hating part of yourself, loathing part of yourself so much that for a while you think ending it isn't such a bad idea. I'm sure some people think it would have been better if you'd shuffled off the mortal coil, immortal coil, whatever. But maybe your dad-" Bruce paused as Loki made a muffled, almost strangled noise at the word. "Maybe Odin didn't have a plan when he found you. Maybe he didn't steal you. Maybe he saw you and didn't see a future monster. Just something small and helpless that needed to be saved."

Loki had gone unnaturally, unnervingly quiet. "Even if that was true, which I highly doubt, it doesn't change what transpired. It changes nothing between Thor and myself."

Bruce chuckled softly, finishing his tea. "No. That's up to you and him. I don't know if Thor even knew your Dad's little secret. I don't know if you even know who you are now. You're not the little brother Thor remembers, but maybe you aren't the guy who tried to kill him. So you aren't quite what you seem. Who is? So you're a megalomaniac frost giant sometimes. I'm a big green ball of rage. That's the funny thing about redemption. You don't stop being who you are. But you learn a little control. You learn to find a better cause than what you had before."

"And that cause is making nice with Thor?" For all Bruce's effort, all he got was a arched eyebrow along with the expected sarcasm.

Bruce shrugged as he pushed himself from his chair. "I don't know what the cause is. You get to find that out on your own." And for all his purported intelligence, Loki could be a little slow on the uptake when it suited his purposes. "You free this afternoon?"

Both of Loki's brows went up at the question. "Because this talk was just so lovely I'd love to endure it again."

"It's not so much talking as knocking stuff down," Bruce said, keeping his voice non-chalant as he shrugged into his jacket. "There's a building that got hit in October when - whatever those things were - shot up the city. There's no money to bring it down, and they can't rebuild till the land's clear. Figure if there was a little tussle..."

"The building will come down and everyone will be filled with good cheer." Loki plucked the catalogue off the table, already paying more attention to it than to Bruce. "And what do I get out of this token gesture of goodwill?"

"The warm glow you sometimes get from destroying things?" And some actions to go along with the words he was sure Loki wouldn't even bother to remember. "Sometimes I like it even better than tea."

* * *

The next time Loki decided to turn over a new leaf, as the Midgardians so put it, Loki would do as the vapid magazines in offices and waiting rooms insisted. He would gain those last stubborn ten pounds only to lose them, organize his closets and his bank accounts, and take up meditation for busy megalomaniacs.

Or he would vow never again to listen to Bruce Banner.

The Hulk and the rest of his ilk had shown, as promised. Though he was loathe to give Banner any credit, the thought of inflicting violence at something hard and unyielding - as well as the building - did give Loki an odd sort of cheer. Loki had gotten a few oddly unsatisfactory blasts at Thor, and wondered idly if using him for knife practice would have given him some kind of solace instead. He felt the need to inflict some tangible damage, anything in recompense for the morning's conversation that left him feeling vaguely unsettled, if not infurlated, the entire afternoon.

The building had toppled as expected. It was a lovely art-deco building, one that reminded him faintly of his apartment, pale green marble, elegant curves and lines he was learning to grudgingly appreciate. Humans were so fickle, so mutable, and some of their fashions were downright atrocious. The 1970s, he was convinced, could only be explained by the drugs.

Stark would no doubt take this as a sign of some sort of redemption, that Loki gave more regard to the aesthetics of the city than to plans of conquest.

If Banner's plan had been a simple matter of bludgeoning the half-ruined building into a cloud of dust and a handful of debris, he should have felt marginally better. The latter half of the battle, however, the Hulk had seized on him as his personal rag doll. Again.

Lying pinned atop the rubble, barely able to breathe said dust into his lungs, he felt quite the opposite of all right.

"Hulk not crush puny god-" Loki tried to protest, to scream back, but it came out a strangled wheeze, and he struggled to take in another breath beneath the Hulk's massive hand.

"You...you rather are crushing me...you ignorant brute-" The beast only pressed harder down, and Loki felt the concrete beneath him crack. Or perhaps it was his spine. The world began to go black, silver dots dancing in front of his eyes, and then the pressure was gone, or at least less.

"Hulk not crush puny god! Puny god see?" The beast - Banner - whatever it was was hovered inches above Loki's face, gaze boring into his, and there was a glimmer there Loki honestly did not expect.

"For the last time, creature, I am not a puny god!" And then the weight was back, and the stars and the blackness, and Loki was dimly aware he was nodding as air and light and searing pain all rushed back. "Puny god sees! Puny god sees," he croaked, and the Hulk grinned, a terrifying sight, rocking back on his heels.

"Hulk smart," he said, tapping at the side of his overgrown green head, as Loki sat up, an arm wrapping around his ribs, which felt as if they'd been set afire.

"The next time you have a point to make," Loki wheezed, looking for a piece of rubble as a handhold. "Please make it over the cup of tea."

"This way more fun," Hulk said. "Little guy think you not listen before."

"Oh, I will pay more attention in the future," Loki said, so winded he almost sounded earnest instead of deeply sardonic. Though he didn't want to admit Banner had a point. He may share his body with this monosyllabic brute, but somehow he controlled it. The monster, at least for now, did not control him.

"If you don't, Hulk make puny god listen," the beast said, and as he drew back his fist, Loki gathered up his energy and winked out of existence before the said reminder sent him flying home instead.

* * *

Loki let his head slump against the door, his poor ribs still knitting themselves together. He was too exhausted to even care about thinking of a plausible excuse. The keys shook in his hands, fumbled in the lock, and he hoped Sarah or, the Norns forbid, her mother, didn't think he was breaking into his own apartment. An overly energetic dust bunny could knock him over in his current state.

"Hey, Mr. G." Sarah turned her head, ever so slightly, from where she sat hunched over on the couch. The apartment was eerily calm: no cheery music, no cartoons, only a muffled sort of thumping coming from Kara's room. A single brow went up and she shook her head at seeing her employer, once again, looking as if he'd gone ten rounds with a truck.

"Dare I even ask what in the world happened?" The entryway was pristine, no signs of damage or chaos or obvious reasons for exiling Kara to her room that he could see.

"I'd ask you the same thing, but you don't ever tell me." Sarah pushed herself to her feet and sighed, crossing her arms across her chest. "I hate to say it, but Kara's starting to be a bit of a brat."

"She is strong-willed, I admit, but I hardly think that leads her down the path towards brat-dom." Loki found himself checking his words as Sarah, who otherwise adored his daughter, only looked at him in stony silence.

"We had a snack and she knocked her juice over-"

"Perhaps it fell?" Sarah's arms only tightened across her sweater, and Loki dimly recalled her mother had likely taught her martial arts as well.

"She knocked it over, and I asked her to clean it up, and do you know what she told me?" Sarah raised her voice to Kara's girlish pitch. "Only stupid, poor people clean. I think you should do it."

"I'm not gonna clean it! I'm not stupid!" Kara's voice, however muffled by the door, was only too audible. "I don't have to do stuff if I don't like it!" In her tone Loki heard Thor's echoes, his youthful bragging and boasting, his casual disdain for the commoners of Asgard that Loki had become rather fond of, if only to be contrary. There was a line between knowing you were superior and acting like an utter prat, and his daughter had just stuck a toe across it.

"I...am sorry you had to hear that," Loki said, the apology sliding awkwardly but genuinely off his tongue. "I'd not realized she'd become so insufferable."

"She's not horrible, but she's gonna be soon. But you're her dad, you couldn't see it if you wanted to."

"I suppose I do have somewhat of a blind spot where she's concerned." Loki tried his best to look contrite, or whatever passed for it.

"You could drive a semi through that blind spot," Sarah said as Loki fished in his wallet for her customary fifty, thought better of it, and doubled her pay. "I know you won't take her out of that school, but you should have her do something a little more local."

"Such as?" Loki knew a remedy was needed, sorely, but he didn't realize being a parent only came with increasing social entanglements.

"Put her in Girl Scouts. It's made Miri way less of a brat." Miri was Sarah's youngest sister, just a little older than Kara. Loki faintly recalled she had been somewhat of an unholy terror when they first moved in. The fact the little pigtailed hellion hadn't come screaming down his hall at six a.m. was something in this group's favor.

"Girls as young as Kara scout? I imagine the discipline would be a benefit to anyone, but don't you think that's somewhat drastic?" The look of dumbstruck confusion on Sarah's face made Loki wonder, not for the first time, how badly the All-Tongue failed to pick up on nuance. Or the contemporary and far different usage of words.

"Not army scouting, girl scouting." Sarah shook her head. "With arts and crafts and singing and badges."

"I hate badges! And crafts are stupid!" Kara gave the door a kick for good measure, rattling the painstakingly glitterred sign reading "Kara's Room" that Loki certainly didn't make.

"They go on trips, do service projects, and basically are normal girls," Sarah said, ignoring Kara's outburst, which was probably for the best. "And the best part? You always get all the cookies you want."

There was a long pause from behind the closed door. "They have cookies?" Kara's voice was much quieter, and far more amiable. Loki remembered the bright boxes they'd bought the spring before, far too many of them, and the near fit he'd had when he couldn't manage to find a single box of Tagalongs in the city.

It was all the encouragement Loki needed.

"Where do we sign up?"


	5. February

**AN: **Oh my goodness, I am so, so sorry for the delay. The last month or so has been a recovery from a very, very bad run of a few months, and while things are finally looking up, they're still a bit uncertain, and my muse was in serious hiding during the time. She finally came back, and I only hope the next update doesn't take so very long.

A million thanks to my patient and speedy betas, Amanda, Jade, and Majoline! You three are wonderful, and thank you so much for the feedback on Clint, especially. And a million more thanks to all of you who have been patiently waiting, who have encouraged me to stick with this even on the worst of days.

* * *

Clint wondered how the rest of them could be so blind.

Tony and Thor were beyond lost causes, Thor because of blood and Tony from whatever idiotic comparison he'd drawn between Loki and himself. The man had red in his ledger, as Nat so often put it, they all did. What Tony had and Loki so glaringly lacked, however, was guilt. Tony might have been the "Merchant of Death," but at least he had the grace to feel shitty about his tech blowing up thousands of people in the Third World. If you pressed Loki, if you twisted him to admit even a shred of guilt, if you tore out the space where his heart would be, there'd only be regret he hadn't made the world burn.

Steve and Bruce, who knew where they stood. Clint had caught that moment last month, where the Hulk could have crushed Loki into rubble but didn't. He didn't know if it was Bruce's mercy or the Other Guy's, and he didn't care, he only knew it left a bitter taste. Steve would do whatever he thought was right. Considering how far Tony had dragged Steve down the rabbit hole of this ridiculous quest for redemption, Clint doubted Steve could even figure out what 'right' was anymore.

At least he still had Natasha, who'd seen the worst he'd done, hell, who'd felt it, heard it, tasted it as he struck her again and again, the blood bright of on her lips. He still dreamt, though not so often, he'd killed her - snapped her neck in his hands, drove an arrow through her pale throat. He'd wake, shaking and pale in their bed, and she knew enough not to ask. Her arms held him, but even the warmth of her skin and the reassuring thrum of her pulse couldn't touch his guilt, much less his rage at Loki and himself.

He'd been undone, she said. It had been a long couple of years, remaking himself, not at all helped by the fact the asshole escaped what the Asgardians considered high-security imprisonment and came back to Earth, hell-bent on taking the planet down with him when the Chitauri came to kill his sorry ass. And then Loki vanished, and while Clint hoped some Chitauri had gotten their rightful vengeance, he knew it was too much to hope for.

It would have been better - for him, for the Avengers, for the whole planet - if Odin had killed him. Or however you tried to kill a god, anyway. If he had, and the gagged, defiant Loki in Central Park was the last the Avengers and Earth saw of him, one girl, out of who knows how many children, would still have a parent who wasn't a genocidal maniac.

Phil was the first one who'd called him Hawkeye, and even if the eggheads like Selvig flung it at him like an insult, Phil had meant it with nothing but respect. Clint might be aloof, he might be a "cold-hearted bastard" as more than one person had called him, but until Loki came along, his long-distance approach meant he was never compromised. Until Loki came along, Phil was alive and New York had been mostly in one piece.

Nothing Loki did could bring back the people he'd killed and the city he'd almost destroyed. He thought Tony realized this, saw it as clearly as Clint. But now Tony was blinded by his dark reflection, this monster who helped kill a woman, took her child, and now wanted a second chance.

Clint had his sight taken away once, and he wouldn't lose it again. Even if he had to take on Tony, he wasn't going to let Loki take the world or one of its children. Ever.

***

Loki adored his daughter. Adoration might not be love, but it was safer by far.

No amount of adoration, however, could make him miss working seidr any less.

At least Kara now believed her beloved lie, that her father was a mutant with a penchant for heroism. Sometimes for her amusement, he spun a shield above his head while she tried to fling her toys through it, laughing maniacally as her stuffed animals flew back towards her. These were mere cantrips, the first spells he wove when he was scarcely older than she. There was an aching chasm between feeling connected to the magic that flowed through all the realms and acting upon it in any meaningful way.

That he still had the connection was a minor miracle. He had expected the All-Father to strip his magic from him the instant Thor had yanked him, gagged and bound, back to Asgard. He did not know what stayed Odin's hand - his mother's softness, no doubt, as Thor's had run out - but whatever caused the weakness, it was the only reason Loki was alive. The Chitauri had found him, as promised, and it was only his magic that spared him when what was left of their forces tore through Asgard's golden walls to find the tesseract and the traitor who failed to deliver it.

They had only found the latter, but Loki snatched at the slenderest of Yggdrasil's branches, the connection to the realm he knew and had come to despise, and if Asgard wouldn't burn in his own death throes, than in recompense for its defiance Midgard would.

Neither he nor the Chitauri, however, had their vengeance. The world he once scorned, if only for its dearness to Thor, he grudgingly accepted for the sake of one small girl.

He planned to continue tolerating this realm for a while longer yet. Nearly four months were gone, four months in which he had been not perhaps Stark's model of reformation, but silent enough, he hoped, to give the man an anxious serenity.

Kara could only see the man he feigned to be. Barton at least had the sense to see the monster. But Stark saw them both, and he wanted the man to be true so badly he imagined a means to salvage the monster. Stark looked at Loki and saw a fellow son whose desperation to prove himself led to questionable life decisions.

It would be so pathetically easy to twist this misguided empathy, along with his brother's delusional love, into a guard against S.H.I.E.L.D. and Asgard's prying eyes. Not a permanent measure, certainly, but enough to wrestle, wrangle, or deceive decades of stalemate from those that would see him thrown in a cell.

Four months of their little bargain were already gone, time flown through his fingers. Every day Kara's eyes were a little sharper, her words clearer. He was proud and pained, that she was growing wise and brighter; but why did she have to do so with such aching swiftness?

All he wanted was however many decades she had. Less than a century, a blink of an eye and a lifetime both. All he had here, realistically, were the next eight months, or however long he had until someone who was not Tony Stark let his family situation slip to Fury.

He wanted to say he had come up with the idea himself. But it was Kara, clumsily sounding out the cover of "Hawwy Potter and the Sorsher's Stony" in the children's section of the library branch just down the street, who had first put the spark in his brain. She was so smitten with Harry (who Loki, perhaps, empathized with as well), and his passage through brick walls to a magical world that welcomed him like no other realm could.

Well. That was certainly something he could do.

Could, unfortunately, turned out to be the operative word. He knew, perhaps best in all the Nine Realms, how to slip between the worlds. The roots of Yggdrasil ran deep, and it wasn't hard to find a tendril in a stately maple on the gentle slopes of Cedar Hill. Establishing that link, that pulsing, living tie, made him painfully aware to lead not one but two safely through its branches, to Alfheim and then to some world where S.H.I.E.L.D. or not even Asgard could find him, would take more power than that he possessed.

Perhaps it was simply easier in Asgard, at the heart of the great tree and the source of the Bifrost. But Midgard drew powerful, dangerous things to itself, such as the Tesseract and himself. Surely there must be something sufficiently strong he could claim for his own in the next few months?

It was easy enough to insinuate himself at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Human documents and credentials were so easy to forge, personas so easy to create, and thus Luke Gwydion, now with a first in Archeology from Cambridge, found his way into a version, in miniature, of his father's vault. And though some items had promise, they never had enough, and a few of these Loki fobbed off onto Doom. Let the human think he was still in Loki's graces and regard.

Loki and, by extension, his daughter's salvation was unassumingly small, nearly overlooked. A small stone carving, like something a poorer Asgardian child might have played with. The swirls and markings of the carving, and the other items, collected over the now-finished lifetime of an enthusiast for Scandinavian archaeology, had an unwelcome familiarity. Loki would have politely refused indexing the pieces, save for the thrum he felt as his fingers closed about the tiny figure. It pulsed of magic, the familiarity now welcome and right and by the Nine, this was worth his very close attention.

He looked down at the wolf cradled in his hand, his bright, feral smile a mirror of its own.


	6. March

In honor of the day devoted to lies and tickery, here is the very long - and long overdue update to the story! Thank you all so so much for your patience, and thanks again, as always, to my fabulous betas, Amanda, Jade, and Majoline!

* * *

Odin could tell his youngest son was trying his best not to cry. A few tears, however, brimmed at the corner of Loki's eyes.

"Did you not try and block?" He watched as the healer dabbed at the long, thin cut that ran through leather and cloth, an angry red line upon pale skin.

"I did," Loki said, biting his lip as Eir began to stitch the wound closed. "My arm didn't do a very good job." He slunk down, staring intently at the floor. "I don't think I'm a very good warrior, father."

"You're merely a young one." The healer's words were kind but Odin knew how false they rang, and he suspected his quick-witted son knew as well. Loki hung his head, only confirming Odin's fears.

"There are ways of fighting that require more brains than brawn. The former you have now, the latter you may have in time." Emphasis on may, as Loki was a tall but lanky child.

"You think I'm wise?" Loki's scowl curved into a hesitant smile.

"Bright, yes. Wise, I'm not so sure of." Eir finished her stitching, carefully examining her handiwork. She handed Odin a familiar jar of a mossy-green salve.

"I think Your Majesties know how to use this by now," she said dryly. She patted the young prince, one of her favorite and most regular charges, upon the head. "If you are thinking to teach him the arts I think you have in mind, I should not mind stitching someone else's arm up for a change."

* * *

"I do not see why you are so upset. Look at them playing! Thor does not treat him any differently." Thor may have had his slighter brother pinned to the ground, but this was only his usual way of showing affection.

"Thor is his brother and he adores him. I do not worry about Thor treating him differently, I worry about court slighting him more than they do now." Odin insisted that the loss of his eye had not affected his sight. Frigga often wondered otherwise.

"His father works seidr without so much as a second glance from those vipers-"

"Because you are their king!" Frigga flung her hands into the air. "They would not dare, whereas they look three and four times at Loki, if you have not noticed. And they do not look kindly." It pained Frigga to see her son the object of those stares and smirks, at his slightness of form, the darkness of his hair.

"He cannot be afraid of the glances of ignorant fools. One day he will be king of Jotunheim. Do you think the hangers-on and sycophants will be any kinder?"

"If Thor should order them to be so." So many of Frigga's hopes for her sons rested upon their own small shoulders. "He cannot bear if anyone harms his brother." The squeal of small voices tugged at the corner of her lips, finally easing the frown that had sat there too long.

"That's exclusively his privilege," Odin murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple. Thor seemed to have trouble exercising said prerogative, as Loki seemed swifter and slipperier than usual.

"Loki! That's not how you fight!" Thor pouted at his mischievous younger brother, perhaps hoping his lips could do what his hands could not.

"It is if I don't want you to hit me." Loki's tongue darted out, before he whispered words Frigga could barely hear. She didn't need to hear them, clearly, for she knew them by heart.

After all, she was the one who taught them to her husband.

A swirl of green and gold sparkled above Loki slender limbs just as Thor's arm came down. Thor stumbled backwards, his eyes as wide as Loki's. Both were shocked, but Loki was not so stunned to show a glimmer of delight in his bright green eyes.

"I hope you know what you are doing, husband," Frigga said, a reassuring smile coming to her lips as Loki looked back to them.

"When do I not?"

* * *

Loki knew he should let the woman go. He knew he should not snap her stocky neck. His grip tightened around her thick forearm, until he could feel the bone beneath.

"Tell me again, and tell me well. How did you let my daughter become injured?"

Kara's poor excuse for a Scout leader and a human being did not answer. Her jaws only flapped silently, only a strained gasping escaping her lips, instead of her vomitous stream of pitiful excuses..

"Sir, let her go!" Angry voices blurred into an incoherent, insistent buzzing. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he swung his hand back, caring little if he flung whoever was so foolish as to touch him into the wall.

"I should kill you where you stand, you snivelling qui-"

"Hey now. Let's keep the homicide and the Shakespearean misogyny to a minimum, shall we?"

Loki should have known he was too distraught to think when Stark's staying hand was a welcome, if perplexing interruption.

* * *

"Okay, deep breaths."

"I do not need you to tell me how to breathe." Loki did not need to be the God of Lies to know when someone was telling them badly. Stark mentioned he'd heard a report of a brunette Brit going berserk after his daughter got hurt, and since he was around, he thought he'd check it out. Nobody, however, simply happened to be in Washington Heights, much less Tony Stark.

"You want to go in and scare the crap out of Kara? Be my guest." Stark leaned against the wall. "Scared and worried dad is one thing. Scary, murderous dad? Less than helpful."

Loki gritted his teeth, but he found his breath, most unwillingly, responding to Stark's bidding.

"See?" The smaller man grinned, and Loki was, as always, tempted to wipe the gesture off his face, if not Stark's head from his body. "You feeling less rage-y?"

"Marginally." Loki took in a deep breath and pushed past Stark, into the room. His chest tightened as he saw Kara, dressed in an odd, shapeless, pastel gown, sitting up in a bed far too large for her.

"Oh, darling." The words felt hollow, as if he was fighting against monsters with the flimsiest of shadows. He tried to smile, but it felt as if his face was made of stone. "What happened?"

"I fell off a rock. A really big rock." Kara pouted, her hands tugging at the odd garment. "Are you mad?"

"Not at you," he said. Never at you, he thought. He manage to move suddenly leaden legs, and wrapped her tight in arms that trembled as they enfolded her tiny form.

"He did almost beat up the lady who let you climb Mount Everest." Stark came up behind him, never knowing when to leave well enough alone. "How're you doing, kiddo?"

"My head hurts and the room feels spinny." Kara narrowed her eyes, wrinkling the white bandage taped to her temple. "Did you bring Captain Amer'ca?"

Tony's brows shifted and his smile flickered for a moment. Loki caught the gesture, feeling oddly relieved Kara's idol wasn't there.

"He couldn't come." Stark shrugged, but the gesture was anything but casual. "You're cranky," he continued, deftly changing the topic. "That must mean you're already better."

"I'm not cranky. I just want Captain Amer'ca." Kara sighed out of pursed lips, curls fluttering away from her face. 'You stink."

"Well, someone still has her sense of humor." A tall man in green scrubs and a white coat strode into the room. "I'm Dr. Patel. Kara's been a model patient." He focused nearly black eyes on Stark. "Do you know you look a lot like Iron Man?"

"Actually I do" Stark answered, absolutely deadpan. "Is she okay?"

"A very mild concussion, and I don't anticipate any complications." Patel extended a stack of papers to Stark, which Loki then snatched out of his hands. He scanned over the almost overwhelming information, gaze fixing on the more ominous of said complications.

"Can you be absolutely sure? This seems to indicate the consequences could be quite severe," Loki said, brandishing the papers back at the doctor.

"I'm sorry, but there's no way to tell at this stage. The damage would be impossible to see so early."

"Impossible to tell on a standard MRI, you mean." Tony crossed his hands over his chest, and for once Loki's first instinct wasn't to rebuke him, or to send him flying through a window. Was the man actually trying to help?

Loki made a note to become far more versed in the Midgardians' incomprehensible system of healing. "Are you saying there is a way to tell if she is all right?"

"Sure. Columbia has a 7 Tesla." Stark shrugged, ignoring the doctor's look of disbelief.

"How did you know it? We haven't exactly made that public yet."

"Because I donated it to you. Well, Stark Industries did. And you putting it to good use might keep our partnership a working one."

Loki couldn't help but smirk as Patel looked at Stark with increasing horror. "So you look like Iron Man because you are Iron Man."

Stark smiled with such smug satisfaction Loki wondered if the man didn't have at least a trace of Asgardian heritage. "It's what I keep telling people."

"I-" Patel shook his head and yielded to the insufferable billionaire. "I know the scheduler. This is highly unusual, to say the least, but..." The doctor leaned in. "I have two daughters. If one of them got hurt, I'd probably want to do whatever I could to make sure they were all right. Maybe even almost kill the person responsible."

"I hardly almost killed her." Loki rolled his eyes. "Nonetheless, I am..." He paused, and again felt the futility of his words, especially when this machine could well be the cause of welcome relief or more anguish.

"What he means to say is thank you," Stark interrupted.

"Would you kindly shut up?" Loki forced himself to focus on the doctor, both for the sake of Kara's health and preserving Stark's at least marginally useful existence. "But she can go home once the test is done?"

"Of course, if it's clear, which I have no reason to believe it won't be."

Kara whimpered, and Loki knew the sound as one of protest and not of pain. "I wanna go home now. Can you stay with me?"

Loki's chest constricted as Patel shook his head. "I can't, darling." That weight eased ever so slightly as he realized there was something he could give her, something that had shielded them from debris and the darkness so many months ago. "But what if I gave you something that would always keep you safe?"

Kara's eyes widened, and she nodded her head as much as she could bear the movement. He leaned in and whispered ancient words, spoken so long ago he couldn't even recall the voice who first murmured them to him. His mother, he supposed, giving him the means to protect himself.

Kara wrapped her arms tight around his neck. "Thank you, Daddy, but don't be scared. I'm okay."

"Do you hear that? She's going to be fine." Stark laid a hand on his shoulder. Loki must have been more distraught than he thought if he let gesture pass. "I think it might be best if we waited somewhere he has less of a chance of committing assault and battery."

"Leave me a phone number and I'll call as soon as we're done." Patel gave Loki and Stark an oddly warm smile. "She's a lucky girl, to have two such caring fathers."

"We are most certainly not together," Loki protested, even as Tony slung an arm around his shoulder.

"Oh honey. Let's do something to work off that stress."

* * *

"Well." Tony lay on the rooftop, helmet up, gasping slightly as he took in the expanse of blue sky. "That was invigorating. How about you?"

"I feel marginally distracted, Stark." Loki's voice was a lazy drawl, coming from a few feet away. 'Was that your goal?"

"Marginally distracted? That's it?" Tony propped himself up on an armored elbow and raised an eyebrow at the lanky god, sprawled out beside him.

"Moderately distracted, then. Is that more of a balm to your ego?"

"My ego can take more crap than even you could dish out. Still, nice to know all of the Mark 42 shows up and hold its own." The first real-life test of that particular suit was memorable in all the wrong ways. Tony pushed himself up, ignoring the pull in his lower back. Loki might have been Thor's scrawny little brother, but damn, the man had a backswing. He also still had a brooding, unsettled look, even after their impromptu sparring session that had kept Loki away from manslaughter charges.

"Hey, she's gonna be okay. Now, if she had been nice to me, then I'd be a bit worried." Tony clambered to his knees, trying not to groan as the servos did likewise. "Seriously, what did I ever do to her to make her not like me?"

"Oh, she doesn't dislike you, which is a pity. It's merely that you aren't Captain America."

"What if I wore that God-awful Iron Patriot getup?"

"Even if she wasn't concussed, she would know better." Loki refused Tony's outstretched hand, reaching instead for the cell phone tucked in however many folds and pockets he had in his armor. Tony heard the screen crack, and he yanked the phone out of Loki's crushing grip before he destroyed the damn thing.

"iPhones might be pieces of crap, but the doctor can't call you to tell you she's fine if you smash this into bits. Why don't I just hold onto this for you?" Jesus. Tony would have an easier time getting the Hulk not to break things.

"I am perfectly capable of handling your pitiful human technology."

"Your kid's hurt and you're worried sick about her. Okay, worried furious. I'm just trying to keep you from destroying innocent technology that didn't do anything to you except be mediocre."

"And why would you bother with such charity?"

"Because she's a kid and this isn't the only time she's going to get hurt." Hell, Loki and Thor's parents probably put swords in their hands as soon as they could walk. Tony didn't think the phrase 'rough and tumble' began to cover Asgardian childhoods. "Or be sick, or get bullied, and you can't go off the deep end every time something happens to her."

"You're speaking as the model of restraint, Stark."

"No, I'm not. Because if it was Pepper there I'd be losing it just as bad as you. But I can't. It's taken me a long time to learn that, but no matter what I do, no matter how many suits I build, there's nothing I can do to keep her completely safe." Tony drew in a deep breath. "That's what sucks about being us lowly mortals. You can love someone but all that love...it can't do everything. No matter how much we wish it could."

Loki shook his head, his brows knit in disbelief. "This is intolerable. No wonder you all drink so prodigiously."

"Welcome to the human race and how very crappy our lives can be." Tony smirked. "Maybe that's why we fight for them so much. They may, on occasion, suck, but they're all we have. Face it, humanity's starting to grow on you."

"Like a fungus."

Tony shrugged. "Not the analogy I'd use, but sure, like one big fuzzy fungus."

If Loki had anymore unsavory comparisons for the human race, Tony wasn't gonna hear them. He felt a buzzing in his palm a second before Loki snatched the phone out of Tony's armored hand. Tony didn't realize he was holding his breath until Loki thumbed off the damaged phone, closed his eyes, and muttered "oh, thank the Nine."

Tony had no idea who or what Loki was thanking, but he didn't really care. If Tony was a demi-god he'd probably be thanking himself. "So she's okay? Thank goodness she's as hard-headed as her dad."

"She seems to be." Loki lifted his head, his gaze fixed onto Tony like a targeting beam. "Stark, I'm curious, how did you know she was hurt? And don't be so foolish as to repeat that drivel you told me previously."

Tony shook his head. No reason to be anything but honest, even to the god of lies. "When we started this deal, I programmed JARVIS to keep an eye on her, so to speak. He got word she was hurt and I came to make sure everything was alright."

Now Loki simply looked confused. "But you came alone."

"Well, I told Steve and Bruce to be ready to come if I needed backup. Which I didn't, and I don't." Tony raised a brow. "Right?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "The only thing I'm going to do today is get her home and see what the city of New York considers grounds for justifiable homicide."

"They're just a little strict on those kind of things."

"I'll just have to find other means." There was a faint smirk tugging at Loki's lips, but a disconcerting frankness in his eyes. "Nonetheless...thank you."

"For not bringing the entire posse? Wait, did you just say thank you?" It had to be something wrong with the suit's audio system. That or else he had hit Loki much harder than he thought. "Did I just miss some very subtle sarcasm?"

"I meant thank you for looking out for her, Stark. For having an ounce of common sense, which I was beginning to think you lacked." Now there was the sarcasm, and the demi-god alien Tony knew and tolerated.

"You'd be surprised how many people make that same mistake." Tony waved his hand idly. Loki didn't need to know 'many people' was everyone Tony had ever met. "But I knew I didn't need any backup on this."

"And why in the Nine Realms did you think that?"

"Because I just knew." Tony shrugged. "And I really like being right."

* * *

The house was quiet and dark, the streetlights casting long shadows through the curtains, the beeps and honks of St. Nicholas Avenue muffled and soft. Kara was tucked into bed, the refrigerator was full of more casseroles than the two of them could possibly eat, and not even a cask of the strongest mead could possibly assuage the worry that sat uneasily in his chest. His sullen anger had turned the glass of Zinfandel in his hand to vinegar on his tongue.

He'd hoped for a quiet evening at home, but when he arrived, Kara heavy in his arms, Stephen, George, Connie and Miriam were waiting, eyes full of worry and hands full of dishes heaped with food.

His circle of acquaintances called it Southern hospitality, insisting you never visited a sick person without a cake or a casserole; Miriam, with her brusque local inflections, just called it common sense. They'd doted on Kara, offering simple books and Teletubbies DVDs (Stephen insisted you couldn't ask for anything less cognitively challenging) and promises of coming to visit once she was better.

For his daughter's sake, he was touched by their concern. For himself, he was wary, despising their kindness not for how weak it showed humans to be but how weak it made him feel.

Here he was, a god, and all his power and cunning could be defeated by a rock, gravity, and a single woman's carelessness. Stark's words echoed until they nearly deafened him, that love, affection, whatever one would call it could never keep the objects of such feelings safe.

Loki's wine glass shattered as it crashed against the wall. He would tear the worlds apart right now if he could to find a place to keep this child, to protect the one thing that was impossibly and inexplicably his. Danger lurked in Doom's suspicions, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s ruthlessness, and now their everyday lives.

After a few moments, he picked up the broken slivers, wiped up the streaks and puddles of reddish-purple liquid before they could stain. As he dropped the handful of glass shards and paper towels stained burgundy, he heard the smallest creak of Kara's bed.

"Daddy?"

Loki wiped at his eyes, thankful for the dark. He entered her room, the dim light from the streetlights past her curtains casting long shadows of dinosaurs and tea sets across blue walls flecked with stars.

"I'm sorry if I woke you up, sweetie. How is your head?"

"Sleepy. Is sleepy bad?"

"Normal sleepy or super sleepy?"

"Normal." In the faintly bluish light, he saw her frown. "Daddy, can you stay with me?"

"Of course I can," he murmured, pulling a plush chair with a well-worn curve in the seat from many a story closer to the bed. He reached out and took her small, slender hand, the paper bracelet emblazoned with her name still around her wrist.

"Can you stay forever?"

Her eyes fluttered back closed, and Loki was thankful to everything in this miserable realm and beyond no one could see the tears that brimmed at the corners of his eyes, trickling down his cheeks.

Of course he would stay forever. What choice did he have?

* * *

Loki opened the door, closed it, and wondered if he was the one waking up from a concussion.

But no, there was Captain America when he opened the door again, complete in the ridiculously colored and clinging outfit that served as the basis of half of Kara's wardrobe. He had a green duffel slung over one shoulder, a cardboard holder cradling two coffees and a chocolate milk in one hand, a paper bag flecked with dark spots in the other.

"Figured I'd spare you the trouble of kidnapping me again," Rogers said with a half-smile. He held out the bag, and Loki caught the familiar whiff of fried dough and sugar. "Tony mentioned Kara liked donuts. How is she doing?"

"As well as any four-year-old who can't watch television can do: bored out of her mind." Kara'd woken up with a mild headache and a shorter attention span than usual, but otherwise was better than even he expected.

"So she's doing all right?" Loki felt a throbbing at the corner of his temple and he wasn't quite sure what would happen first: his death of an aneurysm or his pushing the Captain through his neighbor's wall.

"Who is it, Daddy?" Kara's voice, sleepy but hale, drifted in from the living room, over the twee harmonies of a Backyardigans CD. "Is it Iron Man again?"

"No, it's not Iron Man." Pressing a hand to his head, he cursed himself, cursed the universe's relentless and merciless humor, and opened the door a fraction more. He lowered his voice so only he and the star-spangled man could hear. "This is not out of kindness, or redemption, but because she is so annoyingly fixated on you. If you come in, it will be brief, you will do whatever she asks, and you will leave when asked. Without her."

Rogers met his gaze evenly, nodding his head. "Fair enough." He proffered the cardboard tray and its assortment of beverages. "One of the coffees is yours. I figured you weren't a morning person."

"I'm not. I don't see how that vile brew is supposed to remedy that." Despite how much he despised coffee, Loki had to admit he was running on fumes. He plucked the blue cup out of its cradle and lifted it to his lips. Grimacing, he raised a brow at the bag. "Did you bring a bear claw?"

"Of course."

"Did you bring a chocolate bar?"

"Should I have?"

Loki sighed and rolled his eyes. "Kara, would you come over here and tell Captain America what your dad's favorite donut is, and chastise him for not bringing it?"

The only sign his little girl was convalescing was the extra few second it took her to scramble to the door. Her jaw dropped, and she uttered tiny squeaks of what he hoped were joy.

"Are you really Captain Amer'ca?" she asked once she could finally speak.

"Yes, ma'am." Loki was sure Rogers would have saluted if his hands weren't full of coffee and donuts.

Kara narrowed her eyes, focusing not on the sweets but on his drab duffel bag. "Are you gonna live here now?"

Loki tried his best not to choke on the bitter liquid, and it took a few coughs before he was reasonably sure he could breathe again.

"That's very nice, but I already have a house." Rogers' lips quirked at the invitation. "But I do have some friends in here who would like to meet you."

* * *

"You know, I really don't eat that much." Steve watched his bear self stuff himself on plastic fruit, cake, and hot dogs.

"Daddy says if you eat all your food, you get big n' strong." Kara rolled her eyes. Steve could only imagine where she had acquired that trait from. The Iron Man bear in Kara's hands pushed over a head of plastic broccoli. "You're really big n' strong, so you eat a lot of food."

"Well, thank you." Kara beamed at his praise, and Steve was grateful her inherent sweetness seemed to have weathered Loki's parenting intact. "You should make sure Thor and the Hulk have some food, too."

"They're fine." Loki tightened his grip around the two bears in his possession. Tony had bid on the toys, the entire team in bear form, at a gala shortly after their first battle. Even if Tony was more than a few sheets to the wind when he paid almost $50,000 for the little things, he seemed genuinely attached to them.

But not so attached he couldn't tell Steve to let Kara know she could borrow them as long as she needed.

"Captain Amer'ca's right. You're hungry!" Iron Bear pushed over a tiny box of waffles, two bananas, and a plastic chicken leg to the stuffed Thor and Hulk. "Eat it all gone."

Kara's smile was as bright as Loki's scowl was bitter, but he managed not to crush the bears to fluff as he pulled the plastic food towards him.

"What do you say, Thor and Hulk?" Kara raised a single brow at Loki, who looked a little less impressive sitting in a tangle of long limbs.

"That we would probably eat this cardboard and plastic even if we weren't bears?"

Steve couldn't keep from grinning as Kara frowned at Loki's answer. He at least had the sense to look somewhat chagrined in front of the little girl.

"Fine, fine," he finally said. "Thank you, Iron Bear." Kara giggled as she hugged the fluffy red and gold animal close.

"Iron Bear. You're silly, daddy."

"It sounds better than Bear Man." As Kara dissolved into her almost hiccuping laughter, someone rapped sharply on the door. Loki rose to his feet with a single swift movement, still holding the two bears in his hands. He slid them into the crook of his elbow as he peered into the peephole and began undoing the array of locks.

"Are you playing tea party?" A middle aged-woman with short brown hair strode into the apartment, her equally dark eyes fixed on Kara. The fact he was sitting not more than two feet away in full costume didn't even seem to phase her. "How you doing, kid? How's the head?"

"Good! Captain Amer'ca came to play with me!"

"I see." She crossed her arms and looked down, unimpressed, at Steve, who thought yet again of Peggy. "Nice to meet you, thanks for fighting evil, the usual." She turned that sharp gaze on Loki. "Well, you have a babysitter. Let's go."

"What I have is a man dressed in spandex who brought stuffed animals and donuts. And where in the world would I be going? I'm staying right here."

"I have a friend on the Board. We're going to meet with her, and we're getting the woman who did this fired." She pulled the bears away from Loki and dropped them on top of the stuffed Clint and Natasha.

"While I appreciate your quest for vengeance, it's not needed." Loki looked at Kara with something that resembled pity. "I'm taking her out of Scouts."

"The hell you are. She's been having a great time, Sarah says it's doing her a world of good. She's staying right where she is."

Kara made a small whimpering noise. "I don't wanna leave! I won't climb any more rocks, promise!"

"Oh sweetheart," Loki said, holding one arm around the girl. "I know you won't. But that idiot woman could hardly pay attention to her charges, and I doubt her successor will do any better."

"I've already thought of that. I'll tell you on the way." The woman adjusted her purse. "Trust me, the people I have in mind won't let this happen again."

Loki's sigh seemed genuine enough. "I'll meet with her, but I'm hardly going to leave Kara with him." Loki looked at him disapprovingly, but Steve simply kept his silence.

He knew he didn't have to say a word.

"He's freaking Captain America! Seriously, do I have to do everything?" The woman motioned him up, and Steve obeyed as swiftly as if she'd barked the order.

"She needs dim lights, familiar music, and no TV, books, or computers. Do you have a cell phone? Do you know how to use it?"

"Yes, ma'am." Steve pulled out the small, simple phone Tony had given him. Some sort of model called a Jitterbug.

"You know to call 911 if she gets a bad headache, starts throwing up, seems out of it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She turned to Loki. "There, you have a babysitter. I'll be out in the hall. Kara, you have fun and get better, sweetie. Sarah and I will be over soon. Get your thumbs ready, 'cause we're going to feed some hippos when we come over." And then she was gone, Loki looking as bewildered as Steve felt.

That confused look soon shifted to one of suspicion. Loki could hardly tell the little girl the truth of why he didn't want to leave her with her favorite hero.

But a promise was a promise, and so far Loki had held up his end of the arrangement, sans one provision. Steve scrawled down his number and handed it to Loki. "Call as often as you need to. I'm not going anywhere. We do have a deal." Steve nodded at the closed door. "And a woman who might beat us both up if you don't come with her."

"You swear you'll take care of of her." Loki's voice was barely more than a whisper, but his words had an intensity that could have set his shield humming.

Steve smiled despite Loki's severity, maybe even because of it.

"Scout's honor." Steve paused, waiting until Kara dashed off to her room to grab even more stuffed animals. "There's just one thing I want you to do in return."

* * *

"That took surprisingly long." Tony looked at his watch and grinned. "But not too long. Told you I'd win."

Natasha leaned against the counter, shaking her head. "I only gave you five minutes. Now he gets to pick where we eat for two weeks. Why can't we just bet money again?"

"Because I don't need it, and the rest of you have horrible taste in food. So, how's she doing? Did she like the bears?" Tony sipped at a glass in his hand. "She loved mine, I'm sure. How could you not love it?"

"I'd like it as target practice." Clint didn't even turn his eyes from the television.

"She's doing fine, and she thought the bears were great. That was a decent thing you did." Tea time had soon turned into saving the surprisingly cozy living room from her stuffed dinosaur, who the Bear Avengers beat not with shields or arrows, but an offer of breakfast.

"I am glad she is well." The rest of the team wasn't thrilled Tony had waited so long to tell them, but Thor was only worried for his brother and the little girl in his care. "I am surprised my brother welcomed your company for so long."

"He wasn't exactly there the entire time." Steve held up his hands at the questioning looks. "He and Miriam had to get the woman responsible fired. Which is better and definitely more legal than whatever he had in mind."

"Is Kara still in Scouts? Damn it, Pepper found my Samoa stash, and no one in this city has any boxes left. I can't find out I have an insider only to lose them." Those questioning stares now fixed on Tony. "C'mon, have you tried those things? They're amazing."

"I'm more a Thin Mint guy," Bruce said, shrugging.

"He decided to keep her in. But not without a leadership change." Steve tugged at his hood. "And said leadership has kindly told me we'll be ordering a few hundred cases next year."

"I know I have a sweet tooth, but that's a little ridiculous," Tony said. "Unless we give them all to Sparky and the Big Guy."

"If you want to come up with new terms, Tony, be my guest. There wasn't much room for negotiation."

"Please." Tony crossed his arms over his chest. "She's one woman."

"I'm one woman, Stark," Natasha quipped. "Would you want to renegotiate with me?"

"Miriam's only one of the new leaders." Steve looked Tony up and down. "And without the suit, she could probably take you. I might give her odds even with it on"

"Yeah, she probably could." Tony raised an eyebrow. "So who's the other leader, Cap?"

Bruce pushed himself off the couch, looking at Steve warily. "Yeah, who is it?"

Steve looked at a suddenly fascinating point on Tony's wall. "Let's just say Kara's definitely not going to get hurt again, that's for certain."

Clint shook his head. Of course he would be the first to guess. "You have got to be kidding me," he muttered as he stood and walked out of the room. Natasha watched him uneasily, then turned back to Steve in a blur of red hair.

"You're telling me Loki's taking a break from supervillainy to teach little girls to do arts and crafts and sell cookies?" She glanced between the other Avengers, ending in a sharp, almost barking laugh.

"This other leader is formidable, yes?" There was a sad thoughtfulness in Thor's eyes. No matter how much he might look like any other man, Steve always saw the centuries in Thor's gaze. Maybe it was just a familiar look.

"She had no problem ordering your brother and me around. I think that more than qualifies. If any human can keep Loki in line, besides Kara, it's probably her." Thor nodded, then looked to the rest of the Avengers, sans Clint, in turn.

"I do not know about the rest of you, but I trust Captain Rogers' judgment, if I cannot see things for myself." Steve caught the frown that flickered across Thor's face, and he only hoped this news would help erase it.

"Speaking of that," Steve said, laying a hand on Thor's shoulder. "Loki wanted me to tell you something. He said he and Kara will see you sometime in August." He didn't need to mention the reluctance with which Loki agreed to the little arrangement. Not as if Thor or any of the other Avengers would be surprised.

Thor was silent for a long, awkward moment, and Steve wondered if he hadn't somehow made the situation worse. "That is four months from now?"

"Yeah." Tony's surprise had been easy enough to see. "Glad your brother's finally holding up his end of the deal. But seriously, August? Are the Girl Scouts having summer camp in Siberia?" He smiled offhand at Natasha. "No offense."

"None taken," she replied. "It's not a bad place to camp in July."

"I do not see why you are so upset." Thor clasped his hand over Steve's, and even if a hint of that ancient sadness was left in his eyes, his smile was nothing but genuine. "Four months is hardly any time at all."


	7. April

**Author's Note: **My updates may still be poky but they're at least regular! Thank you all so much for your patience and I hope this chapter is worth the wait! Thanks again so, so much to Jade, Majoline, and Amanda, my amazing Betas Three!

As a bonus, here's a link to the photo that made me squee like a madwoman, as Quvenzhane Wallis was a huge inspiration for Kara this fall in 'Mischief,' and she's slowly become how I imagine her when I write. When I saw she was presenting best villain, I may have made little noises of joy. Just imagine Tom clean-shaven and with dark hair...

**ETA: Ugh, so links don't work in stories! I will add a link to the photo described above to my profile!**

* * *

He blended in so well. It took Natasha a moment to find him, but there was no mistaking the short-cropped black curls, the sharp green eyes, slender fingers curled around a library copy of a thick book, _Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story_, as his other hand held tight to the metal pole. Natasha wove her way through the crowded subway car, her hand clenching the cool metal just above his.

"Interesting book?"

He snapped the book shut, sliding it into the leather satchel slung around his shoulder, and gave her a tight smile. "It was." He glanced around to the car, his perturbed gaze finally coming back to her. "No one else you'd rather interrogate?"

"No one else worth it," Natasha said, swaying along with the rocking motion of the car.

"And what will we discuss? The weather? The Yankees' rather underwhelming season thus far?" Loki waved a hand dismissively, and Natasha felt a certain heaviness in the air, golden flashes sparkling in her vision.

"What was that?" The sinking feeling faded, but Natasha's voice buzzed oddly in her ears.

"A simple glamour." Loki smirked as he looked across the cramped train. No one so much as looked up from their distractions. "You of all people should recognize deception at work." Loki leaned forward, words dripping with casual malevolence. "So who you sent you, Agent Romanov? Stark or your minders at S.H.I.E.L.D.?"

"I don't have minders, and S.H.I.E.L.D doesn't know who you are, much less what train you take. And I work with Tony." Natasha shrugged. "I don't pretend to work for him anymore."

Loki smirked. "But you're going to report back to him like the good little spy that you are."

"He was the one who made this little agreement a team project." Natasha raised a single eyebrow. "If he wants my support, than I'm going to see things for myself. Tony's a good guy." Natasha paused to consider that assessment. "A decent one, anyway. I don't hold any such illusions about myself, or you." Whatever spell Loki cast took away whatever comfort silence should have held. "Neither does Clint."

"Ah, yes. Agent Barton. We had the most delightful chats about you." Loki tilted his head and smiled in a biting mockery of politeness. "How is he doing? Does he still have his bow strung? Waiting for me to slip so he can put one of those arrows through me?"

"He's a patient man."

"It would do him all sorts of good to move on. I didn't do anything to him I didn't do to a handful of scientists and your ever so useful people with guns, and you don't see them sending their...paramour after me," he said, almost spitting the word at her.

Natasha clamped her fingers around Loki's surprisingly delicate wrist. "I'm here for no one's reasons but my own. Did Clint tell you about my childhood?" Natasha tightened the grip on his cool skin. "You should know I'm the last person to let the past repeat itself."

"While I appreciate your concern," Loki said, clamping his free hand around hers, "her room isn't red." She felt bones pushed almost to the point of breaking, but Natasha didn't give him the satisfaction of so much as a wince. "She will never become anything like you."

"So she'll grow up to be like her father, whoever that is." Natasha smiled primly and slid her hand out of the vice-like grip. She had made her point. "Would that be Luke or Loki?"

"And how shall I answer, Agent Romanov? Or is it Miss Rushman?" She kept her mirthless grin even under his withering gaze. "I do wonder how Mr. Stark remembers what to call you."

"Oh, Tony has his own names for me."

"You do have so many to chose from. Natasha, Natalie, the little spider..."

"How original." Natasha rolled her eyes. "What I call myself doesn't change who I am. All I, Tony, or anyone else needs to know is that I'm not the person I was."

"And you, unlike your erstwhile companions, don't think I've changed."

"I know people can change, if they want to." Natasha raised a brow. "Though you aren't exactly a person, and I have no idea what you want."

"What I want is to be left alone, but none of you seem to believe that, save your fine-feathered friend." Loki smirked and lean forward, fingers tracing slow, predatory circles on the cool, curved metal. "But this quaint, cloying notion that you can ever be something but what you're doomed to be." He raised a single brow. "I mean, look at you..."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You've spied, seduced, maimed, and killed, as Agent Barton so kindly informed me." Natasha didn't so much as clench her jaw, refusing to rise to his challenge. "I am having a difficult time seeing how this is different from what you do now."

"If you can't tell between the Red Room and S.H.I.E.L.D., you really don't understand us at all."

"Yes, S.H.I.E.L.D." Loki's grin was sharp and brittle. "The organization that would have rather destroyed this city than allow you to save it."

"You hardly gave them a choice."

"But don't you always have a choice? Isn't that the little lie you tell yourselves every night?"

Loki laughed, his green eyes glinting in the dim light. "That's why you hunted me down? To inform me that should I make the wrong choice with her, you will make me see the error of my ways?"

"Something like that." Natasha smiled tightly.

"I'm well aware some of you have taken it upon yourselves to look after Kara's well being. This may surprise you, but I respect, rather grudgingly, your concern and common sense." Loki's smile was brittle enough to freeze the warm, slightly dank air of the subway car. "I will, however, show no mercy to anyone, and by anyone I mean your dear Agent Barton, who choses to strike at me through her."

"Clint might not like you or this deal, but he would never hurt her."

"Are you an expert on him or just who has the capacity to harm a child? Oh wait, I believe you're quite the authority on both." Even if Natasha didn't need to let her guilt bleed through, it sat hollow in the pit of her stomach, either way. "I doubt Agent Barton has your capacity for bloodshed when it comes to innocents. But whereas I could somewhat trust the Captain and his breathtaking naivete with my daughter, I have no such illusions when it comes to my former compatriot."

"So if Clint takes Kara, you'll kill him?" Natasha raised an eyebrow. "I just wanted to be sure I got the essence of your little rant." My God, she was sounding more like Tony every day.

Loki chuckled, a mirthless, chilling sound. "Has my dear brother ever told you how he and I would sneak into the orchards of the goddess Idunn when we were children?"

"No, he hasn't." Natasha frowned, her brows knitted together. "Are you doing to distract me with a heartwarming childhood story?"

"Oh, there is a point to this, I assure you," Loki answered, his reply doing little to assure her. "We were the princes of Asgard, but even we could only enter her grove with permission. So of course, we took it upon ourselves to enter unseen every chance we had. It was my idea, of course. Thor never was fond of anything but brute, direct means."

"Nice to see some things haven't changed in a thousand years. But you're telling me this little flashback because...?"

"Those apples, which I was so very good at stealing, grant whoever eat them a very long, very resilient life." Loki curled his hand tighter around the metal pole between them, and Natasha swore she could see the silvery surface crack beneath his fingers. "If your little friend does anything to Kara, I will find a way into Asgard and strip Idunn's orchard bare. I'll cram them down his throat and save enough for you, so you can watch as I torture him for an eternity. No matter how much either of you beg me to kill him, he'll live through every length of gut ripped through his flesh, every severed limb, every drop of acid spilling into his eyes. Now is my meaning clear?"

"Crystal." Natasha rested her cool, unshaking hand at her side, meeting Loki's venomous gaze with no sign of fear. "Any other threats you'd like to make."

"That's not a threat. It's a promise, and while I may be a liar, I always keep my promises." Loki stood, smiling tightly as her glowered over her. He made a single motion with his hand, and Natasha saw a golden shimmer in the air. The curious, faint buzzing in her ears was gone, replaced with the dissonant symphony of the Broadway train, pulling into Columbus Circle. "While I hate to cut our lovely conversation short, I have somewhere to be." He hefted a leather satchel over his shoulder as the train slowed. "If you came here looking for answers, I'm not sorry if I disappointed you."

Natasha held fast to the pole as the door opened and people shuffled around her, Loki among them. "What made you think I came here for answers?" He turned, an unreadable expression on his face before the door closed and swept him away from her sight.

* * *

Loki almost didn't recognize the sound.

There was at least something familiar, and he took the jingling to be one of Kara's toys until he recalled the noise and its source.

The phone to which only Doom had the number.

Thanking the Nine that Kara was fast asleep, Loki answered the call. "You really need to find someone else for this late night pillow talk. There are numbers with perfectly reasonable rates."

"Doom does not have time for your trivial prattle," the voice said. Even as Loki rolled his eyes, his hand clenched around the phone a little tighter than was necessary. "These artifacts you have delivered - do you mean them as trifles?"

"I mean them as evidence of my good will," Loki purred, wishing for the thousandth time he could strangle the man through the phone connection. "It is hard to remember what you humans consider objects of great power and bits of cosmic bric-a-brac."

"There is a great power in this city, Doom is well aware." A great power Loki had yet to unlock, the troublesome wolf almost mocking in its silence. "Doom will not have it in any other's possession."

"You may be a sorcerer of some talent, but I hardly have need of your pitiful mortal trinkets. Worry about Strange and Reed and the Avengers. Have I yet shown myself to be a disappointment?" Loki paused. "A significant disappointment, anyway."

"Doom knows you are an ally, though you seem a reluctant one as of late." Loki smirked, despite his apprehension. The man might be a raging megalomaniac, but he was brighter than the average supervillain. "But know this. You would do far better to remain Doom's ally than his enemy."

"I will keep that in mind."

Loki could hear the crash of Doom's glove on something hard and unyielding. "You may joke, Trickster, but Doom does not. All who cross Doom will suffer!"

"Then it's fortunate I have no plans of crossing you at present." Even though the man couldn't see him, Loki still felt a hollow smile pulling at his lips. "And if our only other topic of discussion is my evidently poor skill in appraising artifacts, I believe we're done."

"You had best hope we are." Doom's voice resumed its more restrained tones of metallic malevolence. "Until our next meeting, Trickster."

Loki's palms glistened with sweat as he fumbled to press the red 'end call' button.

* * *

"Luuuuuuuke? Earth to Luke? Anything going on up there?"

Loki blinked, nearly dropping the coffee that clearly was failing to do its one miserable job of keeping him awake. His late night caller had ensured Loki did little but pace about the apartment and work out half a dozen spells to try and awaken the slumbering stone wolf.

"Sorry." Loki took a sip, running a hand through his slightly more unruly hair than usual. It really needed a trim. "I should have asked them to make it a little stronger."

"You should've asked for a caffeine drip," Stephen said. "Anyway, we were talking about next month. Do you and Kara have any plans for Memorial Day weekend?"

Humans had so many holidays and festivals, most of which revolved around feasting. Perhaps that was why the Asgardians held them in such esteem. "I don't believe so. Should we?"

"Perfect! You have to come, so we can sweet talk Miss Connie into joining us." George rubbed his hands together. Connie, fishing through her purse, looked less than impressed.

"Come where?"

"Alabama. Orange Beach, you and Kara will love it."

All Loki knew of Stephen and George's home state was that it was of little consequence, save for barbecue and college football. And that it was a considerable ways from New York. "Not that I doubt it isn't charming, but we have a perfectly good ocean in New Jersey."

"Luke's right." Connie plucked a tube of lip gloss from her purse in triumph. "The shore is closer, it's cheaper, and they stopped filming that damn show."

"It's not the same. If I don't get some decent pulled pork soon, I'm going to go into withdrawal," Stephen said, sounding almost petulant. "Listen, the flight from here to Mobile is the same as the drive, right?"

Connie held up her hands. "I can't just afford two tickets! I'm glad the two of you have good jobs but I barely make my rent sometimes."

"We can get your ticket-"

"I didn't ask you to!"

Alice, Oscar, and Kara looked up from their nearly finished donuts at their bickering parents. Kara dusted the crumbs from her purple sweater and hefted her kitty purse over her shoulder.

"Why are you fighting?"

Loki couldn't help but smile at her directness.

"We're not fighting," Connie said, pressing a hand to her forehead. "We're just talking loudly."

"You always talk loud," Kara said, drawing sniggers from Stephen and George. "But you sound mad."

"Oh sweetie, I'm not mad. I just don't want my friends to think I'm some kind of charity case."

Stephen and George's chuckles ceased, and Loki could see the contrition in their eyes. Midgard, even more so than Asgard, had gaping chasms between those with much and those with little. He had grown up never lacking for anything, save the truth, but he saw those on Asgard who had gone without.

He hoped, although in retrospect it was a foolish thing, he had never been unnecessarily cruel to those who also lived in Asgard's shadowy places.

"I think I may have a compromise," Loki said in his most dulcet tones. "The Met has asked me to pick up a few more hours, and Kara's babysitter is quite busy with her softball team."

Loki saw the confusion on Kara's face, but she was wise enough to stay silent.

"What does that have to do with this?" Connie sighed as Oscar climbed into her lap.

"If you could be so kind as to watch Kara after school whenever you're able, until Sarah is free, I think that would more than recompense any payment I chose to give you. Say, for airfare to this beach of Stephen and George's."

"Luke, I-" Connie shook her head and looked away, even as the three small ones were looking between themselves with growing excitement.

"It's a simple business arrangement. That's all." Loki smiled as Connie threw up her hands, this time in acceptance.

"Fine, fine! Ay, you and that silver tongue."

Loki smiled crookedly as Kara clambered into his lap, a high-pitched chorus of "beach, beach, beach!" rising from her and her friends. She leaned up, cupping her hand around his ear, and thankfully lowered her voice to a whisper.

"Daddy!"

"Hmmm?"

"Sarah quit softball!"

Loki chuckled and whispered back in Kara's ear. "Oh dear. We shouldn't tell Connie then, should we?"

Both Kara's eyebrows shot up before she clambered back to his ear. "Is that a lie?"

Loki laughed and wrapped his arms tight around her as she giggled. "Yes it is, darling. It is."


	8. May

**Author's Notes: **An update in less than a month! Will wonders never cease?

Thanks to my amazing betas, Amanda, Jade, and Majoline, who not only catch all my goofs, but encourage me to keep writing this minor epic. And thanks to all of you for your patience and support - it means so very much. :)

* * *

Kara liked the sun. She liked the sand, warm and squishy between her toes. She liked the bucket full of shells waiting to go home and be named and put up on the shelves in her room, in Kara's museum of rocks and things. She liked the warm water splashing at her ankles.

But what she liked best of all at the beach was seeing her Daddy happy.

He always smiled when they played, when they read stories, when he tucked her in, but some days he just seemed sad, or scared, and even hugs and cookies and pictures didn't make him not-sad.

Kara's head was all better, and she didn't get headaches anymore, and Daddy and Miriam were her favorite Scout leaders ever, even if Daddy rubbed his forehead and frowned a lot when they were doing arts and crafts. But if her owie wasn't making him not smile, she didn't know what was.

Maybe it was work. A lot of times he came home and he was really, really quiet after Sara or Connie left. So maybe if work made him sad, being not at work and at the beach would make him happy.

Kara had been a tiny bit scared on the plane, and George was a lot scared, but they had Captain America Bear and he was never afraid, and he had his shield to keep them all safe. Then the nice man came with pretzels and sodas and it was just like movie night, watching The Hobbit on Daddy's iPad.

Kara decided she liked flying, and she liked trips, and she hoped Daddy would take her lots and lots of places.

It was sticky and hot when they got off the plane, but everyone was nice, especially the ladies who looked like Kara imagined her Mama looked smiled at her and told her how pretty she was. Stephen and person George started talking the way everybody else did, all nice and slow and Connie thought it was funny but Kara thought they sounded beautiful.

At dinner, everyone shared, and everything was yummy. Kara's favorite was the ribs and the macaroni and cheese. The tea was sweet, like soda, and Daddy made a funny face when he drank it. For dessert, they had the best banana pudding ever, even better than Stephen made her when she bumped her head, and her Daddy liked it so much he even got seconds.

When they got to the house, Kara was so tired and full Daddy had to carry her into the room. But Kara heard the ocean, heard the crash crash crash of the waves, and she snuggled little George, who liked the noise too, and they fell asleep.

Stephen and person George made biscuits for breakfast, with lots of sweet, sticky syrup on top, and they ran down to the beach as soon as they put on their bathing suits. Kara left Captain America to keep the house safe against alligators - one of her friends at school said there were alligators in Alabama but maybe they were nice ones, like in Princess and the Frog. But dinosaur George really wanted to go to the beach, so Kara said he could, but only if he didn't get wet.

The Mommy and Daddies took turns playing with them, picking them up and twirling them in the water. Oscar was the first one to see the dolphins and they yelled and waved at them until they swam and jumped away. They had chicken and funny cheese sandwiches for lunch, and the Mommy and Daddies (mostly the Mommy) made them wait on the blanket for a little bit before they could go back in the ocean.

"We're gonna go see Grandma and Grandpa before we go back home," Alice said, kicking her toes on the sand. "They're Daddy George's mommy and daddy, and they like the tigers and not the elephants, so that's why Daddy Stephen says we can't talk about the goddamn football with them."

Kara opened her mouth. She knew that was a bad word, and the Mommy and the Daddies must have known it was a bad word too, but they were laughing so hard they forgot to tell Alice that. Stephen and person George started arguing about who was better at football, tigers or elephants. Kara didn't know why tigers and elephants would play football, but she said even though tigers could run fast and had sharp claws, elephants could hold the football with their trunk and stomp over all the tigers.

Stephen gave Kara a high five. Person George looked cranky, but then Stephen fed him a funny cheese sandwich and he didn't seem so mad anymore.

Kara and Oscar made a sand castle. Kara decided it should be Hogwarts, and Oscar said okay as long as there were knights and a dragon. Castles definitely should have dragons, but a nice dragon, and Kara plopped little George on top of one of the towers.

The Mommy said they could go back in the ocean, but not before her and the Daddies got them with the sunscreen. It smelled like coconut and made her skin dark and shiny. Even though her hands were slippery, she tugged at her Daddy and ran for the waves, giggling as she jumped on top of them.

"I like this beach," she said, kicking and splashing Daddy's legs. "Can we come back?"

"That would be a very long way to go play in the water," Daddy said, smiling. "It is much nicer than that horrible pool."

Kara didn't like the pool Sara would take her to - it smelled funny and her eyes hurt after she'd go swimming. "So much nicer! And I don't think anybody's peed at the beach. Except the fish." Kara wrinkled her nose. She hadn't thought about the fish pee. Daddy laughed and leaned down to pick her up.

"There is an awful lot of ocean. I think you're quite safe from the fish and their business." Kara loved how Daddy always talked to her like she was a grown-up lady, and not a small one.

"You're silly, Daddy." she said, wrapping her tiny arms around his neck. "But I like it when you're silly and not sad."

"Why would I ever be sad?"

"I don't know? My owie or someone at your work is mean to you or maybe you miss the place across the ocean where you came from."

"I hardly even think about it anymore," Daddy said, and even though he smiled, it didn't seem like a real smile. "It's very boring and quite small and the people are horrible."

"Even your mommy and daddy?" Kara frowned.

"Especially them." Daddy got quiet, and sad, and Kara wished she could un-ask the question. He shook his head and Kara could tell he was trying to be happy again. "You, however, are mostly not horrible."

"Mostly?" Kara thought about kicking Daddy but that probably wasn't a good way to make him think she wasn't bad. "I'm always not horrible."

"And just who glued a bow to Dominique's hair last week?"

"Me," Kara mumbled, and dropped her head into Daddy's shoulder. But he lifted her head up and gently kissed her forehead.

"There is nothing wrong with being a little bit horrible," he said. He grinned and looked up at all of their friends. "The best kind of horrible, though, is when you don't get caught."

* * *

Jane tugged down at the hem of her dress, which felt like it was barely brushing her hips. Even though she was wearing charcoal leggings, a decision Darcy had vigorously protested ("You're supposed to show a little leg!"), she felt practically naked.

"I should have worn pants," Jane lamented, but the only gesture it earned from Thor was a sympathetic if bemused smile.

"You would look no less beautiful, no matter what you wear. That shade of blue is quite becoming." Thor gave her hand a surprisingly gentle squeeze. "And if I remember Dr. Banner's lesson, a very suitable color for you."

"Hey, you're looking pretty good in it yourself," Jane said, and clearly more than a few passerby, men and women, were thinking the same thing. Jane wrapped a hand around his long blond hair, pulled back from his forehead. "The ponytail might not be regulation, but I'll let it slide."

Thor made a content humming noise that nearly made Jane quiver in her knee-high boots. Thor's hands brushed against her ears, to their new, gently pointed tips. "And you will forgive me if I call you an elf-maiden, and not a..."

"A Vulcan."

Colorado and New York might not exactly be close, but as Jane had to remind herself, at least Thor was on the same planet now. Usually she was the one flying East weekends she wasn't bogged down with teaching or research in Boulder. S.H.I.E.L.D. had very politely offered her a job; Jane had very politely turned them down. Sure, she'd be close to Thor and not in the dark about everything, but her work would never be her own. So it meant a crappy commute to see her boyfriend, but she had freedom.

And now she had her alien boyfriend here with her, and they were at Comic Con Denver, in matching Starfleet uniforms. Sometimes, Jane thought, there was a God.

Or a demi-god, anyway, looking ridiculously good in tight black uniform pants.

"Is the Lady Darcy in costume?"

"Yeah, she is. But she didn't say what, which knowing Darcy, could be a really bad thing." Darcy had only said her outfit was awesome and she couldn't wait to see their faces. Jane had good reason to worry.

"I did not know humans enjoyed dressing as others as much as they do." Thor's blue-eyed gaze caught what must have been the fourth Thor they'd seen today. This one at least filled out the armor a little better than the last one. "Or that so many liked to dress as myself."

Jane grinned and let her hand slide down to his hip. "You're one of their heroes now. Of course they do. And even if our heroes are imaginary science officers in space, it's because we want to be better. We want to be like them."

Thor cocked his head as a shirtless Hawkeye with painfully tight leather shorts (and possibly some serious butt padding) walked by.

"Or we..." Jane didn't even bother to keep from blushing. "Umm, there's actually a really good story behind that..."

Thor's reply failed and his smile flickered as a dark-haired man in a suit and scarf brushed past him. Jane had only seen pictures of Loki, when he first came back, and the second time Thor had burst into her apartment with a tight embrace and instructions to run if she ever saw his fugitive brother. It wasn't Loki, Jane knew that much, but even getting out of New York and the craziness that was Tony's bargain wasn't enough to get Loki out of Thor's head.

"Never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad I'm an only child." Jane tried a joke, a smile, wrapping her arm tighter around Thor's waist, but his frown seemed set in stone. "Is everything okay between you guys? Or as okay as it gets?"

"They are as well as they can be," Thor answered, his gaze fixed downwards. "Which is to say, we scarce see each other, though we live in the same city."

"Your visit in August is still on, right? I mean, he did promise, for whatever that's worth." Jane hoped Thor didn't have his heart set on a happy reunion. "Do... you still want to see him?"

"Apparently he has not gone back on his word, as he has not told the Man of Iron otherwise." Thor sighed, and reached out to tenderly cradle Jane's hand. "As yes, I still wish to be with my brother, despite all he has done. He may have sought to kill me, but I cannot bring myself to make this parting permanent."

"Hey." Jane clasped her hand, which seemed so very small, over Thor's palm. "Family's supposed to make you crazy. Especially when it's tried to take over the world a few times. Being careful doesn't sound like doubt, it sounds like common sense." She brushed her fingers against the back of his hand, feeling the familiar scars, wondering how many his brother had put there. "I know things between you and Loki are...complicated, and would probably take a really long time to explain." An eternity, probably. "But this little girl, Kara, you said she loves the Avengers?"

"The Captain in particular but yes, she does seem to be fond of us. It must vex Loki greatly but for her, he tolerates it."

"Okay. She likes you - and after a day with you, she'll love you - and Loki likes her. I know that doesn't seem like much of a connection, but it's more of one than you had before. And definitely a healthier one."

"I - I will try to take it as such." A genuine smile tugged at the corner of Thor's lips. "You are wise in things even beyond science."

"I try. And if he pulls anything funny, I'll use the science on him." Jane drew herself up to all of five foot five. She really should have gotten taller boots.

"Perhaps from afar."

'I could live with that compromise."

A hand hard on her back knocked her off balance, and only Thor's steading hold kept her from a personal encounter with gravity and the floor. Jane whirled around to see a familiar pair of brown eyes, cocky smile, and a blue glow beneath a black t-shirt.

"If it isn't Spockette and Captain Very Tightpants. Smile for the camera, would you?"

Jane barely had time to blink, much less manage something more attractive than a gaping, open mouth as Thor slung his arm tight around her, a bemused grin aimed cheekily at the camera and the woman wielding it.

"Darcy, you've got to be kidding me." Jane groaned as Thor reached for the camera, looking at the screen in apparent satisfaction before showing it to her. Darcy might be a pain in the ass sometimes, but she knew how to take a cute picture. "All things to go as and you came as him?"

"I know," Darcy said, worming her way in between Thor and Jane. "Coolest costume here, huh?"

"You certainly do have the Man of Iron's personality," Thor said, to which Darcy only beamed.

"Thanks, Big Guy," she said, plucking the camera out of Thor's hands and holding it out as far as she could. "Now everybody smile! Mama needs a new cover photo."


	9. June

First, a million thank yous to my betas, Jade and Majoline, for a last minute lookover that meant this chapter would come out today. You are brilliant and wonderful, as always! Thanks to all of you reading, for your patience and motivation. :)

* * *

"I like the green streaks. It's a good look."

Loki set downhis book, a rather lurid account of collegiate classicists run amok one of his frustratingly widening social circle had pushed into his hands a few weeks ago. He fumbled at nearly chin-length hair, feeling the hard crust of dried tempera paint even before he saw the green smudges on his fingers.

"We were making piñatas at Daisies." Raising a child taught one so many things. How to exist on very little sleep, to have a glass or two of very strong port before a marathon of Dora the Explorer, and to always carry band-aids, Legos, and Wet Naps. Some green still cling to his fingers, but at least he didn't look as if he'd murdered Kermit the Frog. "The girls were, shall we say, rather enthusiastic."

"I thought you made piñatas last month."

"They enjoyed it so much, they insisted we do it again." He smiled and inclined his head. "Though I think they most enjoyed the part when they beat it to a pulp."

Kara, Loki proudly observed, had an especially wicked backswing for a four-year-old.

Dr. Murray smiled and beckoned at the comfortable, unassuming couch in her correspondingly comfortable, unassuming office. "I admit, I didn't know the whole troop leader thing was going to work out. Offering to take the position was...gallant, I'll give you that. But the job seems to suit you."

"It's not precisely a career ambition, but I've yet to have a parent screaming for my head. I'll take that as an endorsement of sorts." Loki settled into the soft, slightly warm leather. "How was her visit?"

"It went well. You're always so terrified I'm going to say something different." She chuckled, but without a hint of malice. "You know setbacks are okay, though she hasn't had one in a while. Parenting's bad enough without making it harder on yourself."

"I've never exactly been one to make things easy." Loki smirked. If there was a way and it wasn't complicated and convoluted, he was severely disinclined to trust it. "But this has been a difficult year of sorts."

"Kara doesn't seem to remember it that way. She was scared after the attack last fall, but she recovered extremely well. The only thing that she talked about when I asked her about hitting her head was Captain America bringing her teddy bears." Dr. Murray smiled and raised an eyebrow. "At least I knew she wasn't suffering from an overactive imagination. But she has so many more good memories than bad. I think adults could learn from that sort of resiliency."

"It's not so easy. Childhood is seldom some tranquil idyll." Loki admired the woman's confidence. It had certainly worked wonders transforming a terrified toddler into a happy, beaming young girl, but he doubted her naively optimistic statement could even begin to apply outside of this small planet.

Dr. Murray leaned forward. "I'm not meaning to pry, and you don't have to answer if you don't wish. This is just something I've wondered for a while now, if only because it may affect you as a parent." Her expression, already too kind by far, softened even more, but something of her gaze held firm. "Were you adopted?"

Loki sat perfectly still, nearly rigid. He felt his hands grow cold, and all he could hear was his own voice, pleadingly questioning the man he thought his was his father to tell him who and what he really was. It was a long moment before he could reply, before he could have any semblance of calm in his voice, but Dr. Murray was a patient woman. She would hardly work with Midgardian children otherwise. "I was. It was complicated. I did not know I was adopted until I was older, until the people I thought were my family had no choice but to tell me the truth."

Dr. Murray merely nodded, not looking pitiful or vindicated, merely knowing. For the briefest of moments she reminded him of his mother, an image he quickly banished from his already turbulent thoughts. "Do you still even speak to your adopted family? Did you ever contact your biological family?"

Loki laughed, not even attempting to hide the bitter edge. "My adopted family," he said, letting the sarcasm roll across the syllables, "is some distance away, and I've little interest in seeing them again. And yes, I did get in touch with my biological father." Loki smirked, remembering the heft of Gungnir in his hand, the flash of light, how the giant collapsed dead to the floor. "It didn't go very well. More for him than me."

"I'm not trying to dredge up painful memories just to be a sadist-"

"That would be a first."

Dr. Murray managed a half-smile. "Adults who have...complicated childhoods, when they have children themselves, can be terrified of repeating what happened to them, of perpetuating cycles." She bit at the edge of her lip. "Was there any sort of abuse when you were young?"

"There was nothing quite like that, though years of lies and having it strongly implied I simply wasn't good enough should count for something."

Welcome relief crossed the woman's face. "I'm glad for that. Even though you've been very open with Kara about how you adopted her, I imagine you have to be worried, at least unconsciously, about lying to her, even if it isn't about that."

Loki tried not to choke on the sip of coffee he'd just taken. The God of Lies, talking to a Midgardian therapist, about the value of honesty. Much less talking about the lie that hung over he and and Kara like a sword. "Truths are complicated. I imagine even more so when you think dreaming about school the night before somehow satisfies your obligation to attend."

"Then age-appropriately honest." Dr. Murray smiled and rolled her eyes. The woman suffered very little from him, which was one reason why Loki would pay whatever princely fees her office charged. "Though I don't have to remind you that Kara is extremely bright. I don't think you could keep too many secrets from her."

There was certainly one secret Loki was managing to keep extremely well thus far, and no amount of therapy in the world could possibly prepare her - or him - for the day that secret saw the painful light of day.

"She worries about you, too. She has an extraordinary amount of empathy, and a very supportive father. With those things in her corner, I think she could adjust to quite a bit."

Loki raised a single brow, even as he felt a tightness at the mention of Kara's concern. "If you insist."

"You've trusted me with Kara this far." Dr. Murray smiled as she pushed herself out of her chair. "Just go with me a little bit further."

Loki also stood, readjusting his satchel on his shoulder, thankful for the marvels that were wrinkle-free button down shirts. "So long as you don't ask me to go out onto a precarious limb." He smiled dazzlingly at the woman. "I've no patience for those."

* * *

"Jarvis, did you put your little brother up to this?" Tony held the length of garishly colored silk across his palm. There wasn't a single suit in the world this tie could possibly match, and if there was, it should probably be destroyed.

"I did not, sir. He wished to express his gratitude. I merely offered suggestions."

"What you call suggestions I call either an act of malice or color-blindness, and I know I programmed you to see in more than black and white."

"He wanted to give you something you didn't already have. As I recall, sir, you have no such article of clothing already in your possession."

"There's a reason for that." Tony rolled his eyes as Dummy's servos whined and he lowered his head. "It was a nice thought," he said, patting the robot gingerly. "Your big brother was just being a bit of a dick."

"I can't imagine where he got that from." Pepper sauntered down the stairs, looking radiant even with tousled hair and only wearing a faded blue T-shirt that barely brushed her upper thighs.

It was good to be home.

A S.H.I.E.L.D. briefing, of all things, had pushed the living situation in the Tower over the edge. Fury's questioning had been fast and, well, furious, and Clint had come damn close to breaking the agreement. Clint and Nat had nearly had it out with the rest of the Avengers when the squabbling group got home, then the master assassins had turned on each other. Cap had broken it up, and Tony was thankful because he really didn't want his place trashed, though he was pretty sure Nat would have kicked Clint's ass if the rest of them had let her. Bruce suggested they all take a break for a few weeks, from each other, from New York, from the possibility of dealing with Loki, and Tony had jetted off for Malibu without a second thought.

"I distinctly remember you saying that exact phrase more than a few times, so I'd say he gets it from his mother."

Pepper smirked at his assessment, but still pressed a kissed to the corner of Tony's lips. "He has you pegged on that tie." She pressed a finger to his mouth before he could protest. "I have the magazine covers from the 90s to prove it."

"I always knew you were a bit of a stalker," Tony purred, encircling Pepper's tiny waist with the hideous tie and pulling her in for a longer embrace. His hands cupped Pepper's hips beneath the soft if garish silk. "Hey Dummy, I think I might have a good use for this thing after all."

Dummy's motors whirred a little more cheerfully as he lifted his head. If Jarvis had eyes, he would be rolling them for not the first time, nor the last.

Pepper brushed her fingers through his hair. "Maybe making Dummy another little brother or sister?'

"I don't see how that- oh." Tony felt a stutter in his chest that had nothing to do with his arc reactor and everything to do with gut-wrenching panic. "You mean like an actual brother or sister. Like a little tiny person."

"That's how they usually tend to start."

"You, you would make a great mom. An amazing mom. You would make papier-mâché volcanoes that would make Martha Stewart weep and organic gluten-free calorie-free cupcakes for soccer and I'd be dropping them, forgetting where they were, expecting them to fetch me snacks before they could walk..."

"Give yourself a little credit." Pepper pressed her hand to his cheek. "Though I'm pretty sure you'd still do all of those things."

God bless Pepper. She kept him sane but she kept him honest. "I don't know, Pep. We've got the company-"

"I've got the company."

"And you're doing an amazing job. But between that and the Avengers, which is a pretty high risk occupation-"

"Look at Sue Storm."

"Was that supposed to be a bad joke?"

"Tony, just listen. Sue and I were talking and-"

"Talking about what? Besides how amazing her marital bliss could be if her husband got his freakishly mobile head out of his ass."

"Tony!" Pepper gave him that look that felt as accusatory as a slap, even if the pink tinge to her cheeks meant she fully got the subtext. "Sue had a little boy, took some time off, and the team did fine. I think you could save the world and still be a great dad."

"You have ridiculous faith in me sometimes. Or all the time. The only model I had for a dad was kind of defective. He..." Tony sighed. "He meant well. I can at least say that. And if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have this." His hand rested on the glowing blue light beneath his shirt. "Of course, without him, I wouldn't have had a chest full of shrapnel in the first place. But I just don't know if I can do anything but turn out the same way."

Pepper smiled beatifically, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead. "How do you think I'd ever let you do that?"

Tony blinked. "Not an option I'd considered. Though I clearly should have."

Her smile curved into something of a smirk. "Why am I not surprised."

"I know, I know. Still learning to play well with others." Tony's hands reached for hers, the ridiculous tie curling between their fingers. "But we do make a pretty amazing team."

"We do." Pepper raised a single perfect eyebrow. "Am I at least 50 percent of this team?"

"A solid 40."

Pepper raised said eyebrow even higher.

"42? I will consider 45." He looked down, his fingers tracing over her delicate skin and manicured nails, and for a moment, a nanosecond, he imagined a third set of hands, impossibly tiny, something they had made without a single blueprint or contract, just made. "And I will consider the whole small person thing one day."

Pepper hugged him so tight he couldn't breathe for a moment, and when she finally pulled away he was sure he saw tears still brimming in her eyes. "Oh Tony..."

"If we do make a little us, hypothetically, one day, I hope she's just like you." He tilted his head, tapping his foot against the floor, as his hands were busy holding hers. "Which if we cloned you would be entirely possible and...that went from sweet to creepy alarmingly fast, didn't it?"

"Uh-huh." Pepper's fingers pulled at the tie, and the playful glint in her eyes was unmistakable and familiar. "Maybe in the meantime we should practice making small people."

Tony looked around the workshop, lowering his voice to a whisper. "In front of the children?"

Pepper wrapped the tie, a little too knowingly, around Dummy's eyes.


End file.
